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HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



BY 



2 7^ 



SYDNEY FLOWER 






!l^5i-"\%^Vt\^-^ 4-1 



CHICAGO 
CHARLES H, KERR & COMPANY 
56 Fifth Avenue 
1896 







Copyright 1896 by- 
Charles H. Kerr & Company 



Unity Library, No. 56. Monthly, $3.00 per year. April, 1896. 

Entered at the Postoffice, Chicago, as second-class matter. 



PREFACE. 

If any should be disposed to give credit to 
the author of this book for his share in its pro- 
duction, let it be remembered that he is only the 
mouthpiece of another. 

It is to such men as Herbert A.Parkyn,M.D., 
Lecturer on Psycho-Therapeutics in the Illinois 
Medical College of Chicago, the "doctor" of 
these pages, that the honor of rescuing hypno- 
tism from the clutches of the charlatan, and of 
presenting it in its natural form to the world, 
properly belongs. 

The simplicity of truth is wonderful. 

To the human being of ordinary intelligence 
who reads the explanations here given, there 
will no longer be anything miraculous in the 
effects produced. 

Sydney Flower. 

Toronto, Canada, Jan. /j*, i8g6. 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE SIMPLICITY OF HYPNOSIS. NOTHING TO 

DIFFERENTIATE IT FROM ORDINARY SLEEP. 

HYPNOTIZED PERSONS CANNOT BE MADE 

TO DIVULGE SECRETS. NO EVIDENCE OF 

SUPERNORMAL POWERS IN CLAIRVOYANT 
DIAGNOSIS. TELEPATHY DUBIOUS. — MUS- 
CLE-READING. 

**It is a wonderful thing!'' said I. 

"If by wonderful you mean miraculous, hyp- 
notism is not in the least wonderful," replied 
the doctor. "Say, rather, that it is a valuable 
addition to medical science." 

"You surely would not belittle its marvelous 
properties?" I exclaimed. 

"I am not belittling them," he answered. "I 
merely wish to rid your mind of the idea that 
there is anything in hypnotism which is mys- 
terious, awful, miraculous! Do you know that, 
7 



8 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

barring idiots, almost every man and woman is 
a hypnotist?" 

"Then why have they never discovered this 
power in themselves?" I asked incredulously. 

"They have not been educated up to it — that's 
all," he answered. "Hypnosis is only, if you 
find the term more comprehensible, self-delu- 
sion. If you will pay attention to me, I will 
make this thing so plain to you that you will have 
no difficulty in grasping my meaning; and first 
of all, I want to know if you understand what 
is meant by the terms 'subjective and objective' 
as applied to the mind." 

"In a general way, yes," I responded; "my 
objective mind is my everyday working mind; 
my subjective is the min.d or soul in me which 
is working when I am asleep." 

"That is it, roughly," the doctor said. "You 
might de^n^ yor^ subjective mind as your con- 
science, or sub-conscious self, but remember 
that the subjective mind is working when you 
are perhaps least aware of the fact. You for- 
get, for example, a certain name, and dismiss 
the matter from your mind^ But with a feeling 
of relief in a few minutes, you pronounce the 
name aloud — your subjective consciousness has 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 9 

found it for you. Hypnosis," he continued, *' is 
the state in which the subjective consciousness 
is uppermost, and the objective has gone to 
sleep. It is the unreasoning, uncritical attitude 
of mind of the hypnotized person which leads 
him to accept as truth almost anything which 
the hypnotist tells him. Thus, if I tell my sub- 
ject that I have given him a ham-sandwich, and 
I offer him a piece of cake, he will eat the cake, 
believing it to be a sandwich." 

"Then he has lost the sense of taste?" 
''He has lost nothing of the kind. If, after he 
has swallowed the cake, I ask him to describe 
what he has eaten, he says a 'ham-sandwich.' 
I ask him if it wasn't rather salt, and he replies, 
'Yes, a little salt.' 'A little too much mustard, 
perhaps?' I suggest. *Well, no, not too much!* 
he may reply. 'Still a glass of beer would be 
a pleasant accompaniment to the sandwich?' 
'Yes,' he agrees that a gla^ss of beer would be 
acceptable, and taking the empty glass I give 
him, he goes through the act of drinking, even 
pausing half-way to wipe his mouth, or draw a 
deep breath of appreciation. This is real beer 
to him, you understand, because I told him it 
was and he believes me. I could make him 



10 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

quite drunk on several empty glasses by suggest- 
ing that he has had too much." 

"A cheap drunk," I said." 

"Before we go into the different phases of 
hypnotism," said the doctor, "which I may tell 
you are so varied and numerous that they have 
defied accurate classification, remember that in 
a dream you may see the most impossible things 
— men like trees walking — animals with human 
faces — curious and instantaneous metamorphoses 
of scenes and objects — yet it does not occur to 
you at the time to doubt the reality of what you 
see. It is only when you awake that the ab- 
surdity of these things becomes apparent to you. 
These dreams are a flash — no more — of your 
subjective consciousness. Now do you see 
just what I mean by self-delusion?" 

"Taking the things that are notfor the things 
that are?" I hazarded. 

"Fut it that way if vou like," he assented. 
"Ver}^ well. Ther-^ are two or three points 
which I wish to impress very carefull}' on your 
mind — on your objective, or reasoning con- 
sciousness, if you please. The first is that with- 
out your cooperation I cannot hypnotize you. 
You must assist me. Hypnosis is a 'blanket' 



fiYPNoTisM Op to date II 

term which covers a great deal. When your 
eyes become rather heavy and you are disin- 
clined to move after dinner, for instance, you 
are in a state of partial hypnosis. When you 
sleep you are in a more advanced stage. Very 
well; hypnosis is merely sleep, and hypnotism 
is the science or art of producing sleep at will. 
This is the dreaded hypnotic influence which 
we read of in the newspapers. Beyond the 
sleep stage there are many others; all, remem- 
ber, harmless, but with them we will not deal at 
present. Now there is nothing in hypnotism to 
be afraid of. The laws which govern it are as 
fixed and unalterable as the laws which govern 
motion in the waking state. If you have been 
led to believe that the practice of hypnotism 
gives the operator a hold upon his subject, that 
is, of course, the person hypnotized, which may 
be used eventually to work evil, banish it from 
your mind. He has no sv^ch power. Suppose 
I hypnotize you, for exampf^, and put you into 
the somnambulistic state, in which you receive 
my suggestions, answer my questions, and do 
my bidding. Now, if I tell you that to-morrow 
at noon you will take a knife from the table, 
and plunge it into the heart of your unsuspecting 
landlady, do you think you would do it?" 



12 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"I should certainly think so," I answered, 
"much as I might afterwards regret the unfor- 
tunate, perhaps hasty action. There have been 
many cases of the kind you mention. Hypno- 
tism and crime are inseparably connected." 

"Indeed!" said the doctor. "Then may I 
inform you that I have made it my business to 
track down some ten or twelve of the most no- 
torious cases to which you, no doubt, have ref- 
erence, and I have found, without exception, 
that hypnotic suggestion had nothing whatever 
to do with the crimes committed." 

"But the newspapers — " I began. 

"The newspapers, "said the doctor,"print what 
will interest the public, without going too closely 
into the scientific aspect of the case. News- 
papers understand that to connect the mj^sterious 
name of hypnotism with a murder is to give it 
an air of 'witchcraft' which lifts it above the 
level of an ordinary crime and makes the de- 
tails eagerl}^ sought after by a credulous public. 
You must confess yourself that those special 
cases had a great attraction for 3^ou." 

"They certainly had," I admitted. "My 
chief regret lay in the fact that I could never 
get a satisfactory account of how they ended." 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 3 

**Ifyou wish to know," said the doctor, 
"the}^ fizzled out into ordinary murders. 
But let us go back. Regarding this proposed 
experiment with yourself, at the hour of noon 
to-morrow, the thought, just as I had suggested, 
would flash into your brain that you were to take 
up a knife and stab your landlady. You would 
dismiss it at once as a ridiculous fancy. If you 
took the trouble to think of it again, which is 
very improbable, you would laugh at the bare 
idea of such a thing. It would be an impossi- 
ble deed, because your subjective conscionsnef^ 
would tell you that it was wrong — simply that 
it was wicked, and you would not do it." 

"I thought right and wrong had nothing to 
do with the matter?" I queried. 

"You never lose your moral sense," the doc- 
tor answered impressively, " no matter how often 
you have been hypnotized, or what you are told 
to do. Hypnotism does not affect the fundamen- 
tal principles of education, and right will be 
right to you, and wrong will be wrong, whether 
your subjective or objective consciousness is in 
play." 

"Hypnotism is very useful in detecting crimi- 
nal action, is it not?" I asked. 



f4 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATfi 

*'It is absolutely useless in that respect," he 
replied. 

"Cannot a man be made to divulge the truth 
when he is in a hypnotic trance?" I persisted. 

"A popular fallacy," replied the doctor, 
''which ought to have been long since exploded. 
A smart lawyer will fetch the truth out of a man 
in half the time a hypnotist could do it, and 
he may even induce a witness to disclose a se- 
cret which he had determined to keep, and that 
is something a hypnotist could never do." 

-'But a man must speak the truth under hyp- 
notic pressure?" I continued. 

"A man will lie as fluently in the hypnotic 
state," answered the doctor, "as in ordinary 
life. And mind you, you cannot extract a se- 
cret from a subject in the somnambulistic stage 
of hypnotism, if he has made up his mind, when 
in the waking state, to guard that secret. To 
illustrate this, I can give you the details of one 
of my experiments, which I undertook some 
time ago to satisfy myself upon this very point. 
To save repetition of names I will use the letters 
B and C in speaking of the other parties. 

"C was a young man whom I had frequentl}^ 
hypnotized. He was an excellent subject, and 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 5 

I could put him to sleep at almost any moment 
by merely snapping my fingers. B was a friend 
of mine and a friend of C's< I said to B, *I 
want you to tell C some story about me, as a 
great secret. Tell him he is on no account to 
breathe a word to any one; and let the story be 
something personal, something affecting my 
character!' B carried out my plan, and three 
weeks went by before I referred to the matter. 
Then one day, when I had h3:^pnotized C, I led 
the conversation round in an easy manner to 
the secret, and told C that I wished to know 
what B had told him. Appeals were no good, 
and I threatened and commanded him to tell 
me. He would say nothing at all concerning 
it. There was just one other thing to do, I 
thought, before giving C a bad time of it, and I 
assumed B's personality — that can be done, of 
course, quite easily in hypnotism — and said 
chaffingly: 'By the bye, you remember that 
story I told you about the doctor; I suppose 
you haven't mentioned it to any one?' 'Oh, 
not a word,' he said. 'Quite right,' I replied; 
'let's see, I forget just how much I told you, — 
you remember, don't you?' 'Yes, I remember,' 
he said. 'Well, what was it?' I asked, 'I want 



1 6 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

to hear it again.' 'I don't wish to refer to it 
again,' he answered. 'It is buried and I don't 
see any use talking about it.' I tried for some 
time to get it out of him, but he would not say 
a word. Then I took up my own personalit}' 
again — the doctor, you understand — and tried 
by every means in my power to make him 
speak. A sweat-box was nothing to it. He 
suffered tortures. Heat, cold, hunger, thirst, 
exhaustion, were a few of the agonies he went 
through, but the end of the matter was that he 
told me nothing. What becomes now of the 
theory of detecting crime by hypnotic reve- 
lation?" 

''Yet criminals and others have told the truth 
under hypnotic examination," I persisted. 

"You are quite right," said the doctor, "but 
they would have been just as ready to tell the 
truth in their waking state. And you can de- 
pend upon it, that it would have been elicited 
with more rapidity by a cross-examining law- 
yer than by a hj/pnotist." 

"H'm," I said. "Are you sure C had not 
forgotten the secret'^" 

"Quite sure, If he had, he would have told 
me so, either as myself or as B." 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 7 

'^Before you begin to hypnotize me, I want 
to know one or two things,*' I said. "Can you, 
for instance, work on a subject at a distance, 
say in the next room, or wherever the sound of 
your voice would not carry?" 

''No," said the doctor, "certainly not! That 
is mental suggestion or telepathy. I have no 
proof that there is such a thing. The subject 
may imagine that I am suggesting that he shall 
perform a certain action, and he will have the 
impulse to do it; as, for instance, he may fall 
asleep at a certain time when I am not near; but 
the suggestion has come from himself or from 
some friend, or association of ideas; my mind 
is not working upon his." 

"There is another phase of this question," I 
said. " Suppose a hypnotic 'professor' advertises 
that he can diagnose diseases, and that a patient 
calls, and is invited to take the hand of some 
person in a trance — a medium, in fact, and Sup- 
pose this medium, who is evidently not sham- 
ming sleep,saysin a far-away voice — ,'You have 
neuralgic pains in your head; your condition 
is one of general debility, but 3^our system can 
be easily built up by the following means,' and 
proceeds to tell him what to do; is this all hum- 
bug?" 



1 8 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

" It is all humbug," said the doctor decisively. 
"When I first began my researches into hyp- 
notism, everything seemed to point to the 
possibility of telepathy being a fact; nay, it 
seemed the only possible conclusion to draw 
from the results of experiments, and I myself 
was most anxious to believe it true, and to estab- 
lish it by proof. But the more I experimented, 
the more unwillingly certain I became that there 
was nothing provable in it, and I have been 
compelled so far to discard the theoryi*' 

"Then the medium was a fraud?" I asked. 

"She may have been perfectly honest in tell- 
ing jou just what came into her mind. She 
may even believe that she is reading your physi- 
cal condition by this telepathic process; there- 
fore I should not describe her as a fraud. But 
as an infallible guide in telling disease she is 
mistaken in her knowledge, that's all. She is 
merely a quick observer, and may hit the truth 
sometimes. Whatever she tells you she has 
gathered either from her personal observation of 
you, or from scraps of information which you 
or the "professor" have dropped. The fraud or 
deception lies here, that you suppose she has a 
clear insight into the state of your physical 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 9 

body. She has not; she speaks from observa- 
tion only." 

"Is there such a thing as mind-reading?" I 
asked. 

"There is no such thing, to my knowledge, as 
telepathy or mind-reading," he replied. 

" But I have seen some wonderful things done 
by mind-reading," I declared. 

"I have said there is no such thing so far as 
my knowledge extends," he replied. "It is prob- 
ably not mind-reading but muscle-reading that 
you have seen. Very wonderful apparently, 
but very simple after all." 

"But at the hypnotic exhibitions," I cried, 
"a medium, blindfolded, will read off the date 
of a coin, or a written question asked by one 
of the committee, when there could have been 
no possible collusion between herself and the 
hypnotizer." 

"There is always collusion," the doctor an- 
swered. "And these tricks have been explained 
again and again. They are only tricks." 

"Can you explain them?" I asked. 

" Nothing easier," he replied. " I may tell you 
that I have often performed them myself with 
great success at charitable entertainments, and 
so on." 



20 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

The doctor then explained the various feats 
of mind-readers, the finding of hidden pins, 
reading numbers, and the rest, and so simple 
were his explanations and so convincing that I 
prefer not to publish them, seeing that it is a 
painful thing to make public the evidence of 
one's own gullibility. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. SIMPLE SUGGESTION. 

CONCENTRATION OF THOUGHT A NECES- 
SITY. WAKING DELUSIONS. HYPNOTIC 

SLEEP CAN BE BROKEN AT WILL. COMMAND 

OF SLEEP DESIRABLE. 

"Now, if 3^ou are ready," said the doctor, " we 
will begin the experiment. Remember that this 
is only an experiment, and that there are a 
hundred and one ways by which we can hyp- 
notize a person. It is a question of tempera- 
ment in the subject. If you were not of a nat- 
urally obstinate turn of mind; if you were of a 
determined disposition, having trained your 
body to act always as your will dictated, if 3'ou 
had admitted the-dominion of your mind over 
your body; if you were a patient seeking relief 
from any ailment or imaginary ill; if, finall}^ 
you were phlegmatic or ignorant, I should merel}^ 
give you a bright object to look at, and say to 
you, 'Sleep; you will go to sleep at once. When 

2X 



22 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

I count five you will be fast asleep' — or some- 
thing of that kind. However, I understand that 
you would immediately say to yourself, 'I am 
not asleep. I am not going to sleep, however 
much I ma}^ wish to. 1 don't feel sleepy,' and 
your waking consciousness would at once be 
on the aggressive. This is not the right state 
of feeling to induce. Remember that the power 
to submit lies in yourself; you must bring your 
thoughts to bear on one thing only — you wish 
to sleep, therefore you can sleep. Think to 
yourself that you desire to do so; that your legs 
and arms are becoming numb and immovable, 
that your e3^elids are pressing down, heavier 
and heavier, and you will find yourself passing 
into the sleeping condition. Don't reason 
about it. Let yourself go." 

''I can't," I said, "I'm too excited." 
"You're not excited," the doctor replied, 
soothingly, "You are evidently becoming 
sleepy. There is too much blood in your brain 
at present. In sleep this circulation is much 
lessened and the temperature is lowered. Your 
head alread}^ feels cooler, and in a little while 
you will be asleep. Now make yourself com- 
fortable in this chair; get into the easiest posi- 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 2^ 

tion possible, and then fix your eyes and your 
mind upon the knuckle of the third finger of 
your left hand. You will find that in the course 
of two or three minutes you will become con- 
scious of the change of tissue that is continually 
going on through the system. In our every- 
day life we are unconscious of it, but fix your 
attention closely on any one part of your body 
for even a few minutes and it becomes appar- 
ent. It will make itself evident to you by a pain 
running up your arm, by a deadness in the 
finger you are looking at, or by a pricking of 
the joint. I shall leave you for a few minutes." 

Left to myself, I endeavored conscientiously 
to do as I was bid, but the novelty of my sur- 
roundings, and the remembrance of what I had 
heard, prevented me from attending entirely to 
my knuckle. Therefore, when the doctor re- 
turned, I informed him that beyond a slight 
pricking in the knuckle I had felt nothing. 

"But you rested your mind bj? trying to think 
of one object,'' he said reassuringly. "Now 
we will trj' something else. You are not to 
suppose that I expect you to sleep at once. 
That will come when you are trained a little. 
It rests with yourself. You will have to believe 



24 . HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

that you will sleep, and you will do so. Now,*' 
and he drew a chair up beside me, 'Mook into 
the pupils of m}^ eyes. So. Say to yourself 
slowly, 'I am going to sleep. I want to go to 
sleep.'" Then he chanted in a soothing mono- 
tone, " Ah, 3^our eyelids are getting heavy ; they 
are getting heavier and heavier. Your legs are 
getting numb, they ^r^jnumb. You don't want to 
move them. You know they are fastened to the 
floor. Your arms are tied tight to your side. You 
know 3^ou cannot move them. Close your eyes. 
Now you are going to sleep — sleep — sleep!" 
Pressing his thumbs hard against my eyeballs, he 
chanted, "Your lids are heavy; they are shut 
close, closer; shut fast. You don't want to 
open them. You know 3'ou can't. Thej' are 
fastened down tight. You can't open your eyes 
till I count three." 

Here the ludicrous side of the situation struck 
me, and I regret to say I giggled like any serv- 
ant-girl. 

"One," said the doctor, "two, three," and 
at the word "three" I opened mj' eyes and 
laughed aloud. 

"I could have opened them long ago!" I said. 

"Yes, but you didn't want to," he replied. 



HYPNOTISxM UP TO DATE 25 

"I know I didn't," I said, "but that was out 
of politeness to you only." 

"I don't think so," he answered. "You were 
quite conscious, but as soon as your eyes began 
to get heavy you were in one of the stages of 
hypnosis. I suggested to you that you did not 
want to do this thing, and you accepted the 
suggestion, because I had told you that you did 
not want to argue. Now then, stand up. Feet 
together. So. Look me in the eye. Your 
legs," he said, making a rapid pass with the 
hand before my eyes a couple of times, and then 
running it rapidly down to my feet — "Your 
legs are tied fast together. You cannot move 
them. They are bound with ropes. You know 
the}' are. You know you cannot move them. 
See if you can before I count five. One, two, 
three, four, five I" 

At the last word I moved one leg forward. 

"I could have done it before," said I. 

"But you have got to believe that you could 
not," said the doctor, with much patience, "and 
when you believe that, it becomes impossible. 
Don't argue with yourself. You saw that be- 
cause you believed for a moment that you were 
tied you could not move 3^our leg. Now your 



26 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

arms are tied fast with ropes. You cannot 
move them. The knots are cutting into your 
flesh. You may try, but you cannot move them." 

I did try, and, curiously enough, it was only 
by a supreme effort that I managed to move an 
arm. 

"You see," he said, "you deh'eved that time. 
Now look at me. What is your first name j^" 

"Sydney," I said. 

"What is it? What is it?" he asked in quick 
succession, at the same time making a circular 
pass in front of my eyes with his open hand. 
"What is it?" 

"Sydney," I repeated. 

"It is easier to say 'Thomas'," he said, mak- 
ing his hand revolve rapidly in front of me. 
"It is easier to say Thomas. Thomas. Your 
name is Thomas. What is it? What is your 
name?" he asked fiercely. 

For some time my lips refused to utter a 
sound, then the name came to me like a flash, 
and "S-S-S-Sydney !" I cried, triumphantly. 

"Oh no, it isn't!" he said. "Thomas. Thomas 
a Becket. Thomas a Becket. That's your 
name. Look at me, Thomas. Now what is 
it? Speak quick!" 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 27 

I gazed at him for some little time while he 
repeated his question, and my eye left his face 
and wandered to the side of the room as I en- 
deavored to think, but, "Look at me I" he re- 
peated. "What is it?" 

"Thomas," I said in desperation. 

" What else ? Thomas what ?" 

"Thomas a Beck — no, it isn't, it's Sydney," 
I yelled. "I couldn't think of it before." 

"We'll go back to that in a minute," he said 
quietly. Then he shut my mouth tightly by 
pressing under the chin and upon the top of the 
head. "Ah, poor fellow!" he cried, "he has 
lockjaw! — dumb! The muscles of his jaw are 
knotted and contracted. He cannot open his 
mouth till I count five." 

I found my jaw as rigid as a rock, and 
though I knew I was shutting it tight myself, 
and though I tried my hardest to open it, it 
was not till the word "five" that it came open 
with a jerk. 

"That's very good," he said, closing my eyes 
with his fingers. "I told you what your name 
was just now. You have forgotten it. You 
never had a name. You cannot remember any- 
thing about it." 



28 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

I searched my memory in vain for anything 
like a Christian name that might sound as if it 
belonged to me, but I had to give it up. 

"Now when I snap my fingers you'll remem- 
ber it," said the doctor, and he did so, and I 
cried out the name. 

"Look at your hand," said he; "it is dead, 
lifeless, quite cold!" and he brushed the sleeve 
of my coat back rapidly. "Dead from the wrist 
to the fingers. Not a bit of life in it. Numb 
and without feeling." He pinched it and I felt 
nothing. He took a needle from his waistcoat, 
and ran it through a loop of the flesh. I saw in 
an idle way that he was doing something with 
my hand, but on a sudden my objective con- 
sciousness told me that it was a needle and that 
it would hurt. I therefore cried out promptly. 

"You felt nothing at first," said the doctor. 

"No, but I did when I saw what you were 
up to," I answered. 

"Well, that is enough for to-da}'," he said. 
" So ends your first experiment. You are neither 
a very good nor a very bad subject. Training 
will make you a good one. You must remem- 
ber that you have been doing some things which, 
seeing that you were wide-awake and conscious 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



29 



all the time, are manifestly absurd, now that you 
look back on them. You understand that you 
were partially hypnotized?" 

"I suppose I was," I said, "though it didn't 
feel like it." 

"How do you know what it feels like?" he 
asked. "Now you remember that when you 
cease to struggle against the suggestions given, 
you will find sleep come to you and not before." 

"Can you sleep at will?" I asked. 

"Certainly," he replied. "It seldom takes 
me more than thirty seconds to get to sleep. I 
was very nearly off once or twice when I was 
giving you the first part of your lesson." 

"Supposing you had slept," I said, "could I 
have wakened you?" 

"Why, of course you could!" 

"But 3^ou would have hypnotized yourself?" 

"I should have gone to sleep, stupid, and you 
would have shaken me out of it." 

"But isn't that very dangerous?" 

"Great heavens! hear this!" he cried. "Dan- 
gerous? Where's the danger?" 

"I have heard," I said, "that a hypnotized 
person cannot be wakened except by the voice 
of the operator, and that if anything should hap- 



30 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

pen to him, the consequences would be very 
serious to the subject." 

The doctor smiled. "Been reading 'Trilby,' 
haven't you?" he asked. "Supposing for a 
minute that Trilby owed her marvelous voice 
to hypnotic suggestion, and was singing on that 
eventful evening when Svengali occupied a box 
at the theater, you remember? Do you know 
what would have happened if Svengali had died 
in the middle of her song?" 

"No." 

"She would have sung her song to the end, 
and have waited for him behind the scenes as 
usual," answered the doctor. "I did not know 
anybody was so foolish as to take the hypnotic 
part of Trilby seriousl}^ I am quite sure that 
Du Maurier himself worked it in as an effective 
b37play without regard to accuracy. In fact, 
the whole plot is more or less of a joke. No, 
no, don't suppose that a person will not wake 
from a hypnotic sleep; but don't imagine that 
there is any special reason why you should wake 
him. If I put a patient to sleep, and sa}^ 'Now 
you will sleep until I wake you,' and then go 
awa}^ intending to return in an hour, but remain 
away for the rest of the da}^ what happens, do 
you think?" 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 3 1 

"The patient sleeps till you return," I an- 
swered. 

"Not always; in fact seldom, if my return 
is delayed beyond an hour or two. I have 
known in very exceptional cases a hypnotic sleep 
to last for a day or even two, but there was 
some very good reason for it, which the doctors 
had not discovered in the ps3'chical condition 
of the patient. Always on arousing, these pa- 
tients have eaten a good meal and felt in excel- 
lent health. As a general rule, however, they 
will wake of their own accord in about an hour 
or less; but if the}^ do not, I say again, there is 
no cause for alarm." 

"It would bean inexpensive way of spending 
a holiday," I suggested. 

"To command sleep," said the doctor," is one 
of the lessons which every man and woman 
should learn, and should utilize. It is a great 
preserver of health, and is merely a matter of 
concentration of the mind. Come to me to- 
morrow at half-past ten in the morning, and we 
will continue the experiment." 



CHAPTER III. 

AN EXPERIMENT IN SELF-SUGGESTION. HOW 

HYPNOTISM RECONCILED A MARRIED COUPLE. 

HOW IT REFORMED A DISAGREEABLE 

MAN. NATURAL GOODNESS VERSUS ORIG- 
INAL SIN. 

"You're late," said the doctor, as I turned the 
handle of his door a quarter of an hour after the 
time appointed. 

"It is mj habit," said I, "to be unpunctual, 
but it happens that I have an excuse. I had a 
bad night last night." 

"Ah, a heavy supper?" he suggested. 

"No supper at all," I replied. "But I tried 
putting rn3^self to sleep by self-suggestion, auto- 
suggestion, as you advised, and the result kept me 
busy and watchful till 2 o'clock this morning.' 

"You gave up too easily," the doctor said. 

"I never gave up at all," I answered. "I 
kept on saying to m3\self, 'I am going to sleep. 
I will sleep. I can go to sleep. I am asleep,' just 
32 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE ^ 33 

as you do, you know, and then something within 
me— it could hardly have been my conscience, 
could it? — cried out, 'You're a liar, you're 
not asleep!' and I had to begin the repetition 
all over again. After an hour of this I got up 
and lit the gas, keeping a very small flame burn- 
ing, and I stared and stared at this until I grew 
dizzy. It had no other effect. Then I hit upon 
a subtle idea. I thought to myself, 'This is my 
landlady's gas. I ought not to burn it. I ought 
to get up and turn it off. But I cannot get up. 
I am going to sleep!' Even that didn't work." 

"No, because you only went into it in a half- 
hearted way," said the doctor. "Your reason- 
ing consciousness told 3'ou that you had a right 
to burn the gas, because you paid for 3'our share 
of it, and therefore, that the injury to your land- 
lady's pocket would not 'lie,' as the lawyers 
say. You were therefore conscious that your 
statement was merely a ruse to cheat yourself 
into going to sleep, and a transparent ruse at 
that." 

"That's all very well," I said. "But you 
must admit that if the ruse had succeeded, it 
would have been a case of inducing sleep by 
concentration of the mind, and that's all that's 
required." 



34 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"If you have that," answered the doctor, 
"there would be no need of the ruse in the first 
place." 

"Surely," I said, "a little variety — " 

"Your fault," said the doctor, "lies in this 
principally, you are too fond of experimenting 
with yourself and then laughing at the experi- 
ments when they fail. That won't do at all. 
There is no thoroughness discernible in your 
attempts. You are apt to trifle with your sub- 
jective mind, and that is something which your 
subjective mind is not going to stand. It will 
retire into its shell like any other animal that is 
being made a fool of." 

"Animals don't have shells," I retorted. 

"It is of no consequence," said the doctor, 
with a dignity that was proof against the thrust. 
"There must be no unseemly levity in connec- 
tion with hypnotism," he added. 

"I will endeavor to make amends," I 
said, "but I find it hard to take myself 
seriously." 

"Yet you must," he said, "or you will fail. 
Remember that. Now before we begin experi- 
menting to-day there are one or two illustrations 
I can give you of the good use to which hyp- 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



35 



notic suggestion can be put in the ordinary 
affairs of life, apart from its application in pa- 
thology and the treatment of diseases," he ex- 
plained. 

"You know you agreed to speak in words of 
onl}' one and two syllables," I remarked. 

"Wherever possible," he admitted. "Some 
months ago I came across an excellent subject, 
whom I will call 'Kitty.' She was a little 
woman, honest and intelligent, and she was 
married to a husband with whom she did 
not agree. He used to drink, I understand, 
and when in that condition would illtreat 
her. Finally Kitt}^ left her husband and 
went to live with her relations. The husband 
was a good fellow enough when he left drink 
alone, and it seemed quite possible that a little 
hypnotic suggestion would smooth away the 
difficulties which beset their home life. I knew 
Kitty ver}'' well, and found her, as I sa}^ an ex- 
cellent subject. After hypnotizing her a few 
times, I planted the suggestion in her mind that 
it would be a very good thing if she were recon- 
ciled to her husband. The suggestion was to 
recur to her at certain hours during the day 
when she was in her waking state. To give 



36 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

point to the illustration, I ought to tell you that 
though Kitty was naturally a good little woman, 
she had come to feel that she had had about 
enough of her husband to last her a lifetime, 
and that she had evinced no desire whatever, 
when I questioned her on the matter, to return 
to him. I have no reason to doubt that at the 
beginning of the experiments a reunion with her 
husband was the last thing she desired. Hav- 
ing given her the suggestion of tenderness to- 
wards him, I looked for a speedy result. It 
came first in the shape of a remark she made in 
her waking state when she was looking out of 
the window on the street from my office. It 
was a pretty cold day, by the bye. 'I wonder,' 
she said, 'if poor Harry' — her husband's name 
— 'has got a sore throat again. This weather 
always makes him ill.' To cut the story short, 
Harry gave up his drinking, and Kitty went 
back to him, and when I saw her a few days 
ago, she was well and happy." 

"And they lived happily ever after," I sug 
gested. 

"The}' are living happily at the present time," 
said the doctor, " which is greatly to be desired." 

"It seems tome," I said, ''that this hypnotic 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 37 

suggestion, if welT understood and practiced 
by humanity, would provide a royal road to 
righteousness which would make sin difficult. 
By that I mean that there would be no merit in 
overcoming evil, because a moral life would be 
inevitably easy of compass. Too eas3% in fact." 

"On the 'No cross, no crown' principle?" 
asked the doctor. "I certainly believe that hyp- 
notism will be the great moral force of the future, 
even if you and I do not live to see it. But 
what is it after all but self-training, an edu- 
cation in the control of matter by mind? If 
sin is simply an evil action, and if evil actions 
are evolved from evil thoughts, and if evil 
thoughts can be easily controlled by the mind 
when the operator has furnished the suggestion, 
it is evident that this science has a great field 
before it as an educator. We shall not eradicate 
evil by its use, but we shall certainly loosen the 
grip of that mythical personage whom we call 
Satan, upon the throat of humanity." 

"But you have not answered my conjecture," 
I said. "Does it seem right that a man should 
be able to turn from evil to good without a 
struggle?" 

"Why should he be 'evil' as you call it, in the 



38 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

first place?" the doctor asked. "Who made him 
so? I answer, circumstance, environment, lack 
of education, and to a certain extent, parentage. 
I am not a believer in original sin. I say that 
life is one long struggle upwards, and that the 
child has implanted in his mind as many in- 
stincts for good as for evil. That both the good 
and the evil are suggested to him, and that ac- 
cording to the preponderance of either, his na- 
ture will develop, is my firm belief. A lazy 
father may have a lazy son, because the father's 
influence on the child's mind at its most recep- 
tive age tended to encourage the slothful habit. 
But heredity, pure and simple, has not much 
to answer for. It is the later influence that 
tells. Wh}^ should you assume that man is nec- 
essarilj' evil?" 

"I only know that he is," I answered with 
conviction. 

"Observe," said the doctor to the empt}^ air, 
"once more the powerful influence of suggestion I 
You have been told," he went on, "that man is 
evil. But you have nothing to show in proof 
thereof. Wickedness? Bah! a disordered state of 
the physical or mental condition. Change that, 
alter that, find the cause and mend it, and the wick 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



39 



ediiess is dispersed. The psychic nature of. a 
man who seems absolutely depraved is really 
unaltered. The good in him is simply dormant, 
and his objective mind, which governs the body, 
and is very sensitive to any disorder of the 
nervous system, is paramount. This is so far 
from being right, that the man must be trained 
again to bring his psychic force, into play, be- 
fore he can return to a normal and healthy 
condition. When we speak of a perverted 
moral nature, it is erroneous to suppose that 
the man's soul or conscience is degenerate. 
The soul is dormant. It is simply the power 
for good which is always in the man. In the 
case of a suddenly converted man — you have 
seen hundreds, without doubt— the soul is 
awakened instantly. A sermon, a denunciation, 
a prayer, a song, any of these may do it. They 
are suggestions which take root." 

"Some of them fade pretty quickly, too," I 
added. 

"Granted," said the doctor, "but who knows 
what good they have done during their brief 
flourishing? Hypnotic suggestion awakens in 
the same way, and by repetition will acquire 
sutBcient power over a man to change his moral 




40 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

nature from bad to good. Let me illustrate 
this point. A man had become unbearably ill- 
tempered. He was in such an evil condition 
that he took no pleasure in his work, his books, 
or his family. He was a nuisance to himself 
and to his neighbors. At first he had his 
moments of remorse when he endeavored to 
make amends by a fit of unusual amiability to- 
wards his wife and friends, but these moments 
became fewer, and finally ceased. He was in 
a very good condition to commit either murder 
or suicide. It was just a mental derangement. 
He was capable of excessive cruelt}^ towards his 
wife; of dishonesty in business; of treacherj' in 
friendship. The origin of the disorder is not 
of consequence; it may have been overwork; 
it may have been evil companionship, influence, 
and therefore suggestion. It all comes down 
to this at last — suggestion. If 3rou say it is 
original sin, I reply that means defective edu- 
cation or evil suggestion again. Now do you 
know how we proceed? We begin by interest- 
ing him in little things. We work on him by 
suggestion. We compel the suggestion, be- 
cause his subjective mind is too inert to evolve 
it of its own accord. We tell him that he is 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 4I 

naturally a kind man, and that he will remem- 
ber on waking from his hypnotic sleep, and at 
times during the day, that he is fond of his chil- 
dren ; that he takes an interest in gardening, or 
some simple thing like that. He believes this. 
We add the suggestion that he will take an in- 
terest in his daily work, but will be glad to get 
home when it is done. We tell him he is not 
an irritable man. He is good-tempered and 
bright. His nature is to enjo}' life. We repeat 
the suggestions for a week or two, and what is 
the result? The lesson sticks. The man be- 
lieves his suggestions. He reforms. You know 
there are people who have told fables so repeat- 
edly that they now believe in them as absolute 
facts; hypnotic suggestion works on the same 
lines. Repeat a thing often enough, and a man 
will adopt it as a truth — a part of himself. It 
may take weeks, it may take months, but sooner 
or later this man is cured of his nervous ailment. 
He returns to his normal condition, cured by 
hypnotic suggestion." 

"But you make wickedness the consequence 
onl}^ of ill-health," I argued. 

"Well, it may be very difficult to trace it to 
that source in ever}^ case, but I know positively 



42 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

that it is so very frequentl}^ The health}^ man 
is inclined naturally towards goodness. And the 
foundation of m}- belief in the natural goodness of 
the human race is given me by the results attained 
in just such a case as I have mentioned. If the 
man were an original sinner at heart, he would 
not accept the suggestion of good. But it is to 
his natural instinct of goodness that we appeal, 
and his soul triumphs over his acquired wicked 
ness." 

'^It is a big problem," I said. 

"It is too big for us to treat of at this time," 
he answered. "No more for to-day." 



CHAPTER IV. 

FREE WILL NOT DESTROYED. THE CONSCIOUS 

NESS OF THE SUBJECT. SELF-PRESERVING 

INSTINCT. MENTAL SUGGESTION. MINOR 

MANIFKSTATIONS OF SPRITISM. — SUBJEC- 
TIVE xMEMORY. THE DIARY OF THE SOUL.- — 

SUPERNATURAL POWER DISCREDITED. 

"Do you remember," said I, "stating that a 
hypnotized person never lost sight of the fact 
that right was right, and that wrong was wrong ?" 

"Certainly," replied the doctor; "what of it?" 

"But the operator has power to make that 
subject believe wrong is right?'' I queried. 

"Oh no, he hasn't." 

"How is it, then, if you gave me a turnip to 
eat and told me it was an apple, I should eat it 
believing it to be an apple, as you said?" 

"You would do this because you were willing 
to carry on the experiment," he answered. 

"Do you mean that I should know all the 
time that it was only an experiment?" I asked. 

43 



44 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"Yes, you would know it, though you would 
not reason on the matter," he replied. . 

''But in that case," I said, ''I should refuse 
to submit to the pains and penalties which you 
could subject me to, and awake." 

"You might wake, certainl}^" the doctor an- 
swered, "but probably you would not. You 
are willing to go through the experiments, other- 
wise you would not consent to be hypnotized. 
You know that; you are conscious of it, although 
you do not argue about it to yourself. Thus 
you would know that you had really eaten a 
turnip and not an apple," 

"Impossible," I said. 

"I'll prove to you that you would know it," 
he replied. "Sometimes after carrying through 
an experiment of this sort, I have^said to the 
subject, 'Do you know what you have eaten?' 
He says, 'Yes, an apple,' or whatever I may 
have told him it was. We can take the apple 
and turnip example; it will do for all others. 
His first thought is that it was an apple. 'Sleep!' 
I say; 'now when you wake up you will re- 
member what it was you ate. Quick, wake up, 
what was it?' 'A turnip,' he replies at once, 
with disgust. Proving, 3^ou see, that he knew 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 45 

what he had eaten. I never told him it was a 
turnip. He evolved it from his own conscious- 
ness." 

"He might have evolved it from the taste in 
his mouth," I said. 

•'Hardly," said the doctor. "He would at 
least require some little time to think over it." 

" Suppose," said I, "that an operator purposed 
doing some wrong to his hypnotized subject, 
could the latter rebel with any hope of success?" 

"I don't understand you; of course the subject 
would wake at once." 

"But if the suggestion were given that the 
subject would not wake for an hour? 

"The suggestion would go for nothing, just 
as soon as the subject's instinct of right and 
wrong was aroused. In an instant conscious- 
ness would return." 

"Why, then, the operator's power is very 
limited?" 

"Good heavens! Must I tell you again that 
through all these experiments there runs the 
consciousness, not reasoned with, not argued 
about, only felt, in the subject's subjective mind, 
that these are only experiments, nothing more. 
I had a patient once whom I cured of stammer- 



46 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

ing. Part of his treatment was to make him 
deliver an address before an imaginary audi- 
ence. He spoke better and better each time, 
and finally his stammering left him altogether. 
He was one of those dignified men whose sense 
of decorum is strongly developed. His man- 
ners were excellent. He proved to me that the 
operator has only so much hold on the subject 
as the latter is willing to allow him, b}- his an- 
swer when I suggested that in beginning his 
address he should put his thumb to his nose and 
spread his fingers out. The gesture, as you 
know, is significantly derisive. I also com- 
manded him to wink at the audience. The sug- 
gestion almost woke him up. He refused point- 
blank; oh no, he could not possibly do such a 
thing! His moral sense, on the alert, you per- 
ceive, told him that the action would be unbe- 
coming." 

"Does a subject ever refuse to accept your 
suggestion on the whole, while believing a part 
of it?" 

"Yes. He does sometimes. It is not well 
to test this judgment of his too much, I think, 
or he might refuse to accept the suggestion al- 
together some day. But 1 can give you a case 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 47 

in point. I say to a subject, 'Now you are 
going to skate. It is a race against time. You 
have your skates on, and this is a clear field of 
ice before you. Is it not?' 

"'Yes,' he says, 'I see.' He is leaning down 
in the attitude of a skater all eagerness to be off. 
'Are you ready?' I say. 'You see that there is 
nothing in your way; that the ice is clear from 
the start to finish? You see the flag at the 
end?' 

"'Yes,' he says. 

"'Then go,' 1 cr}^ and he goes like a shot. 
In this case I have wheeled an armchair a little 
way in front of the subject. As he goes he 
runs round the obstacle in his path. He accepted 
my suggestion that the course was clear, but he 
knew all the time that that armchair was in 
the road." 

"Too polite to call attention to the fact that 
you erred," I suggested. 

"No, it was just a case of self-preservation, 
and I think he thought it was not worth his 
while to remark on it," the doctor replied. "He 
accepted the suggestion, and with the subject 
there is always, as I sa}^ this willingness to ac- 
cept the suggestion up to a certain point. It is 



48 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

like a man taking off his coat, and going through 
a game of romps with children. He is willing 
to do his share of the fun." 

"How do you account for it," I said, "that 
some subjects can remember just what they have 
been doing when the fun is over, and some can 
remember nothing at all?" 

"Of course you mean if they have not had 
the suggestion given them while in the hyp- 
notic state that they will remember?" 

"Of course." 

"Well, I have been asked that question be- 
fore," he answered, "and my theory is this. 
It depends upon the previous expectation of the 
subject himself. His expectation acts as a sug- 
gestion. If he says to himself, 'I ought to re- 
member what has happened as soon as I wake,* 
he will do so; if he does not expect to, he will 
not." 

"You do not believe that a person can be 
hypnotized by mental suggestion given from a 
distance, do you?" I asked. 

"You are going back to telepathy again," 
replied the doctor, "and I must give you my 
previous answer, that although I have been 
informed that it is a fact, and can be done, I 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 49 

have never seen it done by others, or been 
able to do it myself." 

"Yet," said I, "I have seen an operator 
twenty feet away from a subject, who has his 
back turned, and his eyes closed, draw that 
subject towards him with a wave of his hand 
through the air, or even with no motion at all." 

"It is very simple," said the doctor. "I have 
done it myself, but not by telepathy. It 
is the result of the vibration of the air caused 
either by my gesture, or in the latter case you 
mention by merely blowing gently with my 
mouth. The subject feels the breath distinctly 
on the back of his neck, because his sense of 
feeling is in an abnormally quickened state. 
His senses are all so sharpened that if I blow 
softly and continuously in his direction the vibra- 
tion of the atmosphere causes him to raise 
his hands to the back of his neck. His natural 
impulse is to go backwards to where I may be 
standing. From a distance it looks as if the 
operator is mentally influencing the subject, 
but as a matter of fact he is giving and using a 
ph3^sical suggestion." 

"Have you given any attention to the study 
of spiritualism, with its minor manifestations by 
means of the planchette, and table-rapping?" 
I asked. 



50 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"I have gone into them sufficiently to satisfy 
myself that everything I have personally seen 
could be explained on purely psycho-physical 
grounds," he answered. "In speaking of it, I 
want to assure you that there is much less fraud 
about any of these phenomena than is commonly 
supposed. I believe that the majority of those 
who support their belief in the supernatural by 
accounts of singular things which have happened 
to them on certain occasions are not only honest 
themselves, but have actually heard the words, or 
read the writing which contained the seemingly 
supernatural intelligence that impressed them so 
much. But I say also, that if these good people 
had a knowledge of the power of 'suggestion,' 
of hypnotism, in fact, thej^ would find the ex- 
planation of the phenomena not very difficult of 
comprehension. 

" You have no doubt heard some one say in 
a tone of earnest conviction, 'Well, this plan- 
cliette must be in league with spirits. Last night 
it wrote off some extraordinary things for me; 
things which no one present remembered at all. 
I asked it what happened to me this day a year 
ago, and it gave an accurate account of many 
circumstances which had happened on that day, 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 5 I 

of which I was quite unconscious, though when 
I read them out I remembered them quite well.' 
Now this person is much impressed, because he 
knows himself to be honest, and if he had re- 
membered the occurrences he would have said 
so. Result, a convert to spiritism." 

''Well, what's the explanation?" I asked. 

"By concentrating his mind upon the plan- 
chette," the doctor replied, "he has passed into 
the passive or subjective state. His subjective 
mind is at work, and answers the question which 
his objective mind is unable to do correctly. 
Now, lest it should seem strange to you that the 
subjective mind could reply to such a question 
as was then proposed, I am going to tell you 
something which is, I think, really wonderful. 
No action, however trivial, which you have per- 
formed in the course of your life, passes out of 
the memory of the subjective mind. Think of 
it. Your soul has a complete record of all your 
doings, perhaps, for aught I know, of all your 
sayings, from your infanc3\ What's it for? 
Ah, that I don't know. Perhaps this diary is 
going to be of use in another life — perhaps it's 
not! How do I know this? By repeated ex- 
periments with hypnotic subjects. Take one 



52 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

for an example. I had frequently hyj notized a 
young man whom we will call George. On one 
occasion I said to him, *George, this is the six- 
teenth day of July. I want 3'ou to call to mind 
exactly what you were doing and how 3'ou 
spent this day three years ago. Give me all the 
incidents of the morning, afternoon and even- 
ing, and be quick. I'll just give you half a 
minute to get them all in order.' George 
thought for a little while, and then he began. 
He had taken his sisters to see an exhibition 
that day. It was very hot. He described the 
exhibition, man}^ of the performances ; told what 
his party had had for dinner and how much he 
had paid for it. Carried me on to the afternoon, 
and spoke of a cold in his head which was 
bothering him. Finall}^ after a narration which 
extended over six minutes' steady talking, and 
the principal points of which I jotted down, he 
wound up with a description of a small party 
held at his house that evening, and gave me the 
names of those who were present. Now all this 
was very remarkable, but was useless as evidence 
in support of a scientific fact, unless proof of 
its correctness were obtainable. When I woke 
George up, therefore, I requested him to write to 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 53 

his sisters and beg them to search their memories 
to see if their recollection of the incidents coin- 
cided with his own. I received a letter myself 
in a few days from one of the sisters,accompanied 
byUn old diary of her brother's which had been 
left\in her keeping, and which George had given 
her/permission to forward to me. In the letter 
she'isaid that she had thought over the matter, 
but (believed that the events narrated by George 
had\happened on the 17th and not the i6th, and 
thatjto endorse her opinion she had looked up 
this /old diary of George's, and found the events 
accuratel}' chronicled there under date of the 
17th. This struck me as very peculiar until I 
referred to a calendar and found that the mis- 
take had been my own. It was actually the 
17th and not the i6th day of the month when I 
made the experiment." 

"That is very extraordinary, indeed," I said, 
"and have you met with the same success with 
old people in trying to make them recall the 
scenes of their youth?" 

"Yes," he answered, "I have turned old gen- 
tlemen for the time being into boys of twelve 
years of age, and they have so entered into the 
spirit of the thing that they have adopted a boy's 



54 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

voice and speech, and have betrayed a fondness 
for marbles and peg-tops. I know an estimable 
lady," the doctor continued, "who is a firm be- 
liever in spiritism. She will, under the influ- 
ence of a little music, fall into a trance, and will 
then assume the personality of her little son, who 
died when he was six years old. She will speak 
in a childish treble and act precisely as a small 
boy would. He says, through her, that he is 
very happy in Heaven, and that he is allowed 
to come down and see his mother whenever he 
wants to, and he will be ver}^ gl^<3 when she 
^passes over' and joins him. Now this is a 
rather beautiful belief, and for its poetry alone, 
we might well wish that it could be true. I 
have been compelled to believe, however, that 
it is nothing more than the subjective mind, 
speaking of that which the mother conceives to 
be the present state of her dead child. On 
awakening from her trance she is not conscious 
of what she has been saying, but she knows she 
has been speaking as her son, because she has 
been told so before by others, and has accepted 
the suggestion. I am not anxious to destro}^ a 
belief which in itself is productive of such com- 
fort to a bereaved heart." 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 55 

"Concerning clairvoyance," I said," have you 
come to any conclusion in your own mind re- 
garding it?" 

"I have only the negative assurance," replied 
the doctor, "that my own investigations have 
been productive of no result, and that Bernheim, 
who has conducted one hundred thousand ex- 
periments in hypnotism, has no facts to record 
in connection with it. He mentions it merely 
as an interesting study, to be further inquired 
into if one has the time. Although I have heard 
of many extraordinary examples of clairvoy- 
ance, I have not been able to conduct one ex- 
periment successfullj'— if the experiment was 
surrounded with scientific safeguards." 

"Have you had no better success in investi- 
gating thought transference, or the 'astral body' 
theory?" I asked. 

"Unhappily, no better," he replied. "I have 
seen no proofs of either one or the other. I 
may say that I am very anxious to obtain proofs 
if they are to be had." 

"So are we all," I said. "Then as to 'auto- 
matic writing,' 'crystal gazing' and 'fortune tell- 
ing;' you explain all these things on the basis 
of auto-suggestion or some stage of hypnotism?" 



56 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"Undoubtedly," he replied. "There is noth- 
ing miraculous in them ; they are manifestations 
of the subjective mind only." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SECOND LESSON. INVOLUNTARY PHYSI- 
CAL MOVEMENTS. — AIR CURRENTS. A 

GOOD SUBJECT. — SENSE DELUSIONS. IL- 
LUSIONS. RESTORING THE MEMORY. 

"This morning," said the doctor, when I ar- 
rived at his office, "I am going to give you 
your second lesson in hypnotism, and also 
vouchsafe you an opportunity of watching the 
effect of suggestion upon a subject. I am ex- 
pecting a visitor in about half an hour, but we 
will see, first of all, whether you are willing to 
go to sleep yourself." 

'*I have just got up from a very good break- 
fast," I replied; "surely the time is ill-chosen." 

"The morning is always the best time," he 
said, "because then the mind is best able to 
concentrate itself. Now sit down and go to 
sleep." 

I composed myself as I had been ordered, 
and he left me to myself for five minutes, dur- 
57 



58 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

ing which the ticking of the office clock seemed 
unnaturally loud and aggressive. Certainly I 
was nearl}^ asleep once, but the satisfaction 
I derived from the thought was sufficient to re- 
call me to consciousness. I opened my eyes 
when the doctor re-entered the room. 

'^You were asleep," he said. 

"I very nearly was," I answered. 

"You were sound asleep," he repeated. "Re- 
member that. Although your mind was active, 
consciousness had left you, and 3^ou were not 
aware that you were sitting in this room." 

The restraints which ordinary politeness exer- 
cises upon the least of us forbade me to express 
positively a contrary opinion. 

"I have my doubts," I said. 

'•'You must have no doubts," replied the doc- 
tor, conclusivel}^. "To doubt is to disbelieve. 
It is at least the thin edge of the wedge. Now 
stand up. Back to the light. Arms tight to 
the sides. So. A good muscular figure. Hard 
as a rock. Legs firm and straight." 

Really he was very flattering, but I remem- 
bered his teaching and refrained from smiling. 
There is no such thing as levity in hj'pnotism. 

"Head erect," said the doctor. "Stiff as a 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 59 

ramrod all over. You could not bend yourself." 

I stiffened all over like a frozen fish. He 
passed his hands quickly down my sid.s. 
"Close the eyes," he said. "Now, when I 
snap m}' fingers you will fall backwards stiff 
as a poker." 

At the sound I fell, stiff and unbending, as I 
have seen the heroine in melodrama fall ere the 
curtain descends upon her woes. The doctor 
caught me, however, as I knew he would, and 
as the heroine is caught by the hero on the 
stage, who supports her tenderly but with an 
evident effort. 

The doctor laid my head upon a chair, and 
wheeling a stool into line, rested my feet upon it. 

"You can't bend yourself," he said. "You 
don't feel the strain. Open your eyes. You 
could sta}^ like that for an hour." 

"I don't believe I could," I gasped. 

"You can't bend yourself," he said; "it is 
nothing for you to do." 

My vanity as an athlete was touched, yet it 
seemed to me that I could bend myself very eas- 
ily if I tried, but I wasn't going to try. With- 
out any muscular effort whatever, 1 kept my 
position while he removed the chair, and lifted 
me, still rigid, to my feet. 



6o HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"It hurt my neck," I said. 

'* Nonsense!" replied the doctor. "You would 
have stayed there for an hour if I had told you 
to. I could have sat upon you." 

"I am very glad you didn't," I said. 

"You are going now," said the doctor, "to 
fall backward or forward according to my ges- 
tures. If you fall forward you will take one 
or two steps to save yourself. You will not 
lose your balance. If backward, ditto. Close 
your eyes. The air currents will guide you." 

I carried out this part of the entertainment 
very satisfactorily. If he waved his hand to 
one side, I felt the current of air drawing me 
thither. Whichever way he moved, it was the 
same. I received no clue from the sound of his 
footsteps; my guide was the atmosphere. 

A knock at the door interrupted us. "Wake 
up," said the doctor. "Come in," and he went 
forward to meet the subject he was expecting. 

She was a bright looking woman, with a very 
colorless complexion, and she talked to the doc- 
tor as if he were an old friend. Her husband 
would not come with her, she said, having 
some business to attend to, but had no objection 
to her going alone. 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 6l 

''Well," said the doctor at length, after the 
introductions were over, and the weather had 
been satisfactoril}^ disposed of, "it's a long time 
since you were here, Mrs. Brown; has any one 
put you to sleep in the meantime?" 

"No," she said, "and I expect you'll have 
some trouble 3^ourself." 

"Oh no," he replied, "I don't think so; I 
shan't have any trouble with you. I've put 
you to sleep too often before," and he stroked 
her forehead. "Go off quietly now," he said 
soothingly. "You must be asleep before I 
count ten. Let yourself go. Quietly now. 
Quietly." 

Mrs. Brown smiled in an apologetic way, 
but murmured that she was afraid he'd have 
some trouble, and so murmuring,her eyes closed, 
and her head fell back. 

"I am going to show you," said the doctor to 
me, "one or two experiments which I have not 
so far tried with this subject, though I have car- 
ried them through with others. It is a curious 
thing in hypnotism that hardly any two persons 
act alike under its influence, just as no two are 
alike in features or character, though they may 
bear a strong resemblance to each other. This 



62 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

lady is an active somnambulist when hypnotized, 
by which I mean she speaks and acts under 
suggestion." 

"I thought every one did that," I exclaimed. 

'* By no means," he replied. "Some never 
reach the active somnambulistic stage at all, 
they are passive merely, while a large percent- 
age only reach a state of lucid letharg3^ She 
is a ^^^<^ subject, this woman; that is, she is 
intelligent, and is not hysterical. Watch now." 

"Mrs. Brown!" he said, "you can hear me 
speaking to you?" 

Mrs. Brown seemed to collect herself . "H'm?" 
she asked. 

"You can hear me?" the doctor repeated. 

She nodded. 

"Very well, you are in a strange room. You 
were never here before. You can't see any 
person in this room. Can't see any one at all. 
I want you to notice the furniture. You won't 
wake up till I touch you on the shoulder. Re- 
member you can't see any person, and you 
won't hear anything. Open your eyes." 

Mrs. Brown opened her eyes and looked 
blankly about her. She was immediately at- 
tracted by the rocking-chair which the doctor 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 6^ 

set in motion by a kick. She stopped it with 
her hand, and when he kicked it again, she 
looked in a puzzled way on each side of the 
piece of furniture, but could apparently make 
nothing of it. She was also rather interested 
in a stool which was wheeling round under the 
doctor's touch, and when it came towards her 
she put out her hand and held it. 

"Nothing brings out the natural disposition 
of a person like hypnotism," the doctor said to 
me. "I have seen people very badly scared 
by the experiment. If they are hysterical, they 
are a good deal afraid ot furniture which re- 
volves without hands to move it, or a jug of 
water which moves along in mid air of its own 
accord and lowers itself apparently upon the 
table. This woman is of a phlegmatic turn of 
mind. She sees these wonders, but knows they 
will not hurt her. I will wake her and you can 
put any questions you like." He touched heron 
the shoulder and she looked up with a stare 
which changed to a smile. 

"Well, where are you?" he said. 

"Why, I know where I am," she answered. 

"What have you been doing?" he asked. 

"I don't know," she replied. 



64 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

'^ Sleep," he said, and her eyes closed. It may 
be noted here that it was sufficient always for 
the doctor to utter this one word to send her at 
once into the state of somnambulism. "Now 
when you wake up you will remember what you 
saw," he said. "Wake up! What were you 
doing?" 

" The furniture — " she said," I wondered what 
made it move." 

"Were you frightened?" I asked. 

"No," she said. 

"Why, what did you think about it?" I asked. 

"It might have been a spirit," she said, "but 
whatever it was, I knew it couldn't hurt me." 

"Send her off," I said to the doctor; "I want 
to ask her something." 

"Mrs. Brown," said the doctor, "when you 
go to sleep I want you to talk to this gentleman. 
Sleep." 

"Why don't you think spirits would hurt 
you?" I inquired. 

"Because they never do," she replied. 

"Did you ever see a spirit?" 

"No, but I lived in a house that was haunted 
for three months, and heard the voices," she 
answered. 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 65 

" Were you afraid ?" 

"No, I knew, whatever it was, it wouldn't 
do me any harm." 

I tried to argue her out of the belief that there 
was anything more dreadful than a rat at the 
bottom of the ''noises," but her convictions were 
too deeply rooted. 

"When you open your eyes," said the doctor, 
"you will see me sitting in front of you, but you 
will be deaf and dumb. When I touch you on 
the shoulder you will wake up. Open vour 
eyes." 

Mrs. Brown complied, and at once by ex- 
pressive pantomime showed that she was aware 
of her affliction. She pulled at her chin with 
her finger, at the same time looking hard at the 
doctor, who merely laughed. "It is a very 
fine day," he said. After a while he touched 
her on the shoulder, and told her she was all 
right. His touch did not take immediate effect, 
and she still continued to pull at her chin. 

"What's the matter?" he said, touching her 
again. "You're all right. Wake up." 

"What did you do to me?" said she. "I 
couldn't speak." 

"Couldn't you hear me speaking?" he asked. 



66 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

V 

'No," she said. "There was a buzzing in 
my ears and I couldn't hear anything." 

"Sleep," said the doctor. "Now I'll show 
you something interesting," he said to me. 

"When you wake up, Mrs. Brown, you will 
remember what it was I said to you. Wake 
up! What did I say?" 

"You said I was all right," said Mrs. Brown. 

"What else?" asked the doctor. 

"And that it was a very fine day," she added. 

"Proving," said the doctor complacentl}' to 
me, "that the deafness produced was merely an 
imaginary ailment, and not an actual fact, even 
temporarily, since the patient hears with the 
subjective consciousness." 

"Sleep!" he said. "Stand up." Then go- 
ing to the far end of the room, he blew gently 
towards her. 

The subject started, and swayed forward a 
few steps. He continued to blow, and she con- 
tinued to move towards him two or three steps 
at a time. Then he dodged to one side, and 
back again, and she followed obediently in re- 
sponse to his blowing. Placing her in position 
a few yards from him, with my chair between 
them, he blew softly, and she came against the 



i 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 67 

chair. She did not wake, though I half expected 
she would. 

"Go back," said the doctor, '^a few steps, 
and turn round twice. Now when I say 'Three,' 
open your eyes. You will only see me in the 
room, and you will immediately come forward 
to my hand." 

"One, two, three!" 

At the word the subject opened her eyes and 
came forward, but as she came she struck against 
my legs, which were in the way. She looked 
down, then she looked at me, and was awake. 

"I thought that would wake her," said the 
doctor. 

"So far," he said to me, "you have only 
seen a few interesting experiments which you 
believe in because you see them, and because 
you know that this subject is reall}' asleep, but 
which, if you recounted them, others unconver- 
sant with hypnotism might doubt. I'm going 
to give you an illustration now of the power of 
hypnotism. 

"Sleep," he said. "Now, Mrs. Brown, you 
can sing." 

She shook her head. 

"Oh yes, you can," he asserted. "You cat) 



68 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

sing, and you want to sing. You sing beauti- 
fully. Now I want you to sing me a verse of 
— let me see — What song do you know best?" 

"I don't know any very well," she said, 
dubiously. 

"Just think a minute," he said. ''What song 

do you know best?" 

•'I can remember 'The Sweet Bye and 

Bye,"' she said. 

"Excellent," cried the doctor. "The very 
thing I want to hear. A verse of that, please, 
and stop directly I snap my fingers or call ' Stop. ' 
Begin." 

Mrs Brown coughed delicately, and in a thin, 
small voice sang the first two lines. Half-way 
through the third the doctor snapped his fingers, 
and she stopped dead in the middle of a long 
note. 

"What else do you know?" he asked. 

"I know 'Suwanee River,' and 'Ben Bolt,' " 
she said. 

"Good! Let's have 'Suwanee River,'" said the 
doctor cheerfully. "A capital old song, Mrs. 
Brown, and you are in good voice to-da}^" 

Mrs. Brown began boldly and got as far as 
"'Way down upon the Suwanee Riv — ," when 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 69 

the doctor cried, "Stop," and she stopped, 
dumb. 

"Go back to where you left off in the other 
song. Quick!" he said. 

Without an instant's hesitation, Mrs. Brown 
took up the half-note, and completed the verse 
of "The Sweet Bye and Bye." 

"Bravo I" said the doctor. 

Then he took her half-way through " Ben 
Bolt," and sent her back instantly to"Suwanee 
River." Mrs. Brown instantly began " — ver 
Far, far, I roam," etc., and, having completed 
it, and engaged in some desultory conversation 
with the doctor about her husband, was sent 
back like a retriever, to rescue the remainder 
of "Ben Bolt." 

It was, I thought, a remarkable achievement, 
and I said so. 

"Yes, it is a curious thing," said the doctor. 
"I have not tried the experiment with her be- 
fore, but I had a quartette whom I put through 
more difficult exercises than this. The}^ were 
improving, too, with practice, and it is difficult 
to say what their powers might have attained 
to eventually if I had persevered with the ex- 
periment, which change of residence forced me 
to discontinue." 



70 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"Can the voice be improved by hypnotic 
suggestion?" I asked. 

"Unquestionably," he said, "although I cer- 
tainl}' think it could be done equally well, but 
in a longer period, during the waking state. 
The advantage of hypnotism here is that we 
have the power to banish nervousness and self- 
consciousness, which in themselves are quite 
sufficient to retard the cultivation of the voice. 
I believe that all good singers on the concert 
stage are in a subjective state while singing. 
If they become conscious of the audience, they 
suffer in having their attention diverted for an 
instant from their song. A really great artist 
is unconscious of the audience. 

"Attend to me, Mrs. Brown," he continued. 

The subject, or the h3'pnotee, had been con- 
tentedly standing with her eyes closed, just in 
front of the doctor. 

"I want you," he said, "when you leave this 
office, to go down to the corner, and dance a 
jig in the middle of the crossing." 

Mrs. Brown shook her head in protest. 

"You will dance a jig," the doctor repeated. 
"Remember," stroking her forehead, "when 
you come to the crossing, you will dance a jig. 



HYPNOTISM UP to DATE 71 

You must, because I order you to do so. Don't 
forget/' 

Mrs. Brown continued to frown, and to shake 
her head emphatically. 

"What are you to do now?" inquired the 
doctor. " Repeat it to me. What are you to 
do?" 

It seemed that it was impossible to repeat. 
Mrs. Brown merely continued to shake her 
head, half raising her hand. 

"She would wake up," said the doctor to me 
in an undertone, "if the suggestion were per- 
sisted in." 

"Sleep!" he said. "Mrs. Brown, when you 
leave this office this morning, you will go down 
to the house at the corner, and when you get 
there, you will forget your name, and where 
you live. You will come back opposite this 
window, and then you will remember who you 
are and go straight home." 

He repeated this suggestion to her several 
times and she received it passively. Then he 
woke her up. 

"Well, how do you feel?" I asked. 

"Very well," she said, "only I must go home 
now. It is surely twelve o'clock." 



5 2 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATS 

"Sleep,-' said the doctor. "Ah! you feel so 
miserable, so wretched! You are broken-hearted. 
A good cry would make you feel better." 

Mrs. Brown, albeit she did not look as if she 
were much given to crying, looked ver}^ de- 
pressed, and sighed grievously. 

"Ah, too bad, too bad," murmured the doc- 
tor, sympathetically. "Tears will relieve you." 

Two large tears coursed slowly down her 
cheeks, and she began to sob quietly. 

"Is she enjoying herself?" I asked. 

"It is a great relief," said the doctor. 

"Now, when I count three," he said," you will 
wake up laughing, and you will feel as well as 
you ever felt in your life; feel in splendid health; 
quite well and happy! nothing the matter with 
you. One, two, three!" — and Mrs. Brown re- 
turned to consciousness smiling broadly, though 
the tears were wet on her cheeks. 

"Well," she said, "I must go home now. 
Good-bye." 

The doctor saw her to the door, while I 
watched from the window. Mrs. Brown walked 
briskly down the street,, stopped at the corner, 
hesitated, and returned. Just as she came op- 
posite the office window she whirled round 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 73 

quickly and went back the way she had come. 

"As mad," said the doctor, who had rejoined 
me and was looking over my shoulder chuck- 
ling, "as a hatter, I know!" 

"With you?" I asked. 

"Oh no, with herself for forgetting. Now 
mark me, if she had known from whom that sug- 
gestion came, she could not have forborne, be- 
ing a woman, from looking up at this window." 

"Tell me," I said, "how is it you could make 
her laugh and cry and yet could not influence 
her to dance that jig?" ^ 

"Because laughing, and cr^ung are natural ex- 
pressions of emotion," he answered. "She is in 
the habit of doing them, but she does not dance 
jigs, least of all in the public street. You saw 
that she refused to entertain that suggestion at 
all." 

"Will it recur to her?" I asked. 

"Probably not," he said. "I don't think it 
will ever cross her mind." 

"Suppose," said I, "that you had chosen to 
personate her husband, and had asked her to 
kiss you; would she have done it?" 

" Certainly not," said the doctor. "She would 
either have evaded the topic of the kiss alto- 



74 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

gether, and spoken of other matters, or, if driven 
into a corner, she would have refused point- 
blank and perhaps awaked." 

''So she would have known that you were 
not really her husband?" 

''Of course she would have known." 



CHAPTER VI. 

AUTO-SUGGESTION. — THE IMPORTANCE THERE- 
OF OVERLOOKED BY WRITERS ON HYPNO- 
TISM, — RECOGNIZED BY THE NANCY SCHOOL 

AS A FACTOR. — AN OBSTINATE PATIENT. 

AN AUTO-SUGGESTION OF PAIN. — AUTO-SUG- 
GESTION CONSTITUTES RESISTANCE. — A 
MATTER OF PRINCIPLE. — A MATTER OF 

TRAINING. A MATTER OF SENTIMENT. — 

AUTO-SUGGESTION LATENT AND ACTIVE. — 
VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY. — SUBMIS- 
SION MORE A VOLUNTARY THAN AN INVOL- 
UNTARY CONDITION. 

When I reached the doctor's office the fol- 
lowing morning, I found him turning over the 
pages of a manuscript which, on a closer scru- 
tiny, proved to be in his own handwriting. 

''What have you there.?" I asked. 

"An address which I intended to deliver be- 
fore our society," he replied, "upon the sub- 
ject of * Auto-suggestion.' It was hastily put 

75 



76 Hypnotism up to date 

together, and I think I'll polish it up a little." 

"Better deliver it now before me," I said. 
"Try it on the dog, you know." 

"I suppose you could understand it?" he re- 
marked dubiously. 

"Take care," I cried. 

"What's the matter?" said he. 

"You are making a depressing suggestion 
even now," I replied. "You say, 'I suppose you 
could understand it,' meaning thereby, *I doubt 
if you will be able to,' t. e., 'Your talents are 
of an inferior order.' Results: I belieye my 
talents to be of an inferior order." 

"I am glad you are beginning at least to un- 
derstand the importance of suggestion," said 
the doctor, "but in this case I was thinking more 
of your brief apprenticeship than your mental 
caliber. However, you may find some points 
interesting, and if you wish to ask any questions, 
don't hesitate to interrupt." 

"I never do," I answered pleasantly. "Read 
on." 

"Auto suggestion," announced the doctor in a 
clear voice, and began: 

"In almost every branch of study, be it what 
it may, the amount of knowledge gained by the 



Hypnotism up to date 77 

student does not, as a rule, depend on the num- 
ber or the length of the lectures he attends, but 
upon the reading, study, and practical work 
which he performs outside of the lecture room. 

"Especially is this true of the subject we have 
been studying lately. It is impossible, in the 
length of time we have devoted to it, to have 
acquired a finite knowledge of the very impor- 
tant and all-absorbing science of hypnotism. 
We have ru&hed through, and demonstrated, 
some of the various phenomena of hypnosis— the 
practical methods of inducing this state; the re- 
lation of hypnosis to crime; and the effect of 
suggestion in the waking and sleeping states. 

"Now there is any quantity, even a super- 
abundance, of literature at our disposal, dealing 
with all these branches, but there is one very 
important side of the subject which, though 
extensively recognized, has not, so far as I am 
aware, received a chapter to itself in any of the 
published works on hypnotism. I refer to Auto- 
suggestion. 

"That it is a very important study, we must 
all admit; that it plays a very important part in 
our every-day life in health, sickness, and dis- 
ease, is generally admitted also, and since it is 



78 HYPNOTISM UP TO DA'ffi 

difficult to tell where it begins or ends, nay, even 
what it is or what it is not, I do not wonder that 
we have very little literature on the subject; and 
3'ou may imagine, therefore, that it is with much 
timidity that I approach this branch of our sub- 
ject this evening." 

"That hardly sounds genuine to me," I said. 
"You don't really feel an}' timidity concerning 
the reading of your papers before that society, 
do you?" 

"I feel that my study is necessarily incom- 
plete, "said the doctor warmly," and therefore — " 

"Well, well," I said. "But you might have 
put it more ingenuously, I think. Go on." 

"Now what is auto-suggestion? It is really 
a suggestion which arises entirely within one's 
own mind from some thought, or from some 
bodily sensation, either real or imaginary. 

"Hudson describes it well when he says: 'In 
its broad signification it embraces not only the 
assertions of the objective mind of an individual, 
addressed to his own subjective mind, but also 
the habits of thought of the individual, and the 
settled principles and convictions of his whole 
life; and the more deeply rooted are these habits 
of thought, principles, and convictions, the 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 79 

Stronger and more potent are the auto-sugges 
tions,and the more difficult they are to overcome 
by the contrary suggestions of another.' 

"Auto-suggestion is now recognized as a 
factor in hypnotism b}' all the followers of the 
Nancy school. The Christian Scientists recog- 
nize it, and coupled with sufficient faith depend 
upon it as a cure for disease. 

"Professor Bernheim says it is an obstacle in 
the way of the cure of some of his patients, and 
he cites the case of a young girl suffering from 
a sprained ankle. 'I tried to hypnotize her, and 
she gave up to it with bad grace, saying it would 
do no good. I succeeded, however, in putting 
her into a deep enough sleep two or three times, 
but she seemed to take a malicious delight in 
proving to the other patients in the service that 
I did her no good, that she always felt worse, 
etc. The inrooted idea of antagonism, the 
unconscious auto-suggestion that hypnotism 
could not cure her, seemed to be all-potent in 
this case. Was it this idea, so deeply rooted 
in her brain, which neutralized not only our 
efforts, but her own wish to be cured?' 

"It is this auto-suggestion that prevents hyp- 
nosis from becoming almost a general anaes- 



8o HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

thetic. Patients who to-day become profoundly 
anaesthetized for an operation, on the morrow 
frequently become hyper-sensitive. The reason 
for this is quite plain. Being accustomed to 
see and hear of drugs being given for the relief 
and cure of pain, they are unable to understand 
how it may be controlled in any other wa}^; and 
the self-suggestion that they necessarily must 
experience pain, contiicts with the suggestion 
of the operator and causes confusion in the 
mind of the patient, who either awakens or, as 
I say, becomes even hyper sensitive." 

"That could be very easily got over," I said. 
"I would not trust to hypnotic suggestions of 
sleep alone, in performing a difficult operation; 
give the patient an empty bottle and tell him to 
inhale the fumes of chloroform; where would be 
his auto-suggestion of pain then?" 

"We know all that," replied the doctor. "I 
am reading a paper on auto-suggestion, if you 
will allow me. 

"Moll recognizes the power of auto-sugges- 
tion as a potent factor which must always be 
taken into account in conducting experiments, 
altl.ough neither he nor Bernheim recognizes it 
in discussing the legal aspect of hypnotism. It 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 8 1 

is in fact impossible for an operator to impress 
a suggestion so strongly upon a subject as to 
cause him actually to perform an act in violation 
of the settled principles of his whole life. The 
more repulsive a suggestion is to the hypnotee, 
the stronger is his resistance. Habit and edu- 
cation play a very important part here, and it is 
very difficult to successfully suggest anything 
that is opposed to the confirmed habits or con- 
trary to the sense of propriety of the subject. In 
support of this I have conducted numerous ex- 
periments, one of the most interesting of which 
had for its subject a Catholic priest, who was 
apparently well hypnotized, and willing to obey 
every suggestion. On being presented with a 
glass of water to drink, however, he waked up, 
and asked the time, and on being assured that 
it was not twelve o'clock, he drank the water 
and slept. When we questioned him afterwards 
about the occurrence, he informed us that as he 
had to say mass in the morning, nothing was 
allowed to pass his lips after 12 p. m. 

^* Another splendid example of the force of 
auto-suggestion was given me a few days ago. 
I had never been able to make an active som- 
nambulist out of a certain friend of mine, nor 



82 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

had I been able to successfully suggest anything 
that was contrary to his sense of propriety, 
without having a dehypnotized subject on my 
hands." 

"What do you mean by that?" I asked. 

"He woke up," responded the doctor, briefly. 
"In conversation with him, however, I gathered 
that if it were not that he did not wish to become 
a somnambulist he knew that he could readily 
be put into that condition. He agreed for once 
to let himself go, and the result was that in a 
few minutes he was out on the street hunting 
for a policeman to arrest me, believing that I 
had thrown a can of dynamite out of the win- 
dow to kill some person in a carriage below. 

"Another subject refused to take a glass of 
ale offered to him by a Professor Gale, and the 
reason afterwards given was that he imagined if 
he did so, the Professor would have a lower 
opinion of him in consequence." 

"Might not the association of 'ale' v>'ith 'gale' 
have suggested to the subject some hidden prac- 
tical joke," I asked, "to which he was unwill- 
ing to become a party?" 

" He also stated," continued the doctor, "that 
he was not thirsty." 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 83 

"That I should judge," said I, "to be the 
more powerful reason for his refusal, though, in 
a student, it is inconceivable." 

"I have seen a student," resumed the doctor, 
"on whom you could foist any illusion — chang- 
ing his personality, for instance, to a dog, a 
rooster, or a horse^refuse absolutely to become 
a pig. He kept repeating 'No, I am not a pig — 
not a pig,' and do what I would it was impossible 
to make him accept the suggestion." 

"Doubtless," said I, "he had been christened 
'Pig' at school, on account of his gluttonous in- 
stincts. Hence his rooted, or might we not in 
this instance say 'rooting,' antipath}^ to the 
epithet." 

"We have heard a great deal lately about the 
possibilities of extracting evidence, or secrets, 
from a hypnotized individual. I have reason to 
conclude, however, that it is an impossible task. 

"I refer here," he continued, turning to me, 
"to that case I told you of where I tried to ex- 
tract a secret from my friend. You remember?" 

"Perfectly," I answered. "Goon with some- 
thing else." 

"I once made the superintendent of a Metho- 
dist Sunday-school dance, play cards with the 



84 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

devil, and although a married man, flirt beyond 
bounds — " 

"A nice distinction," I interrupted. 
— "with imaginary ladies. I was surprised 
at the time, but recent developments have ex- 
plained everything to the strengthening of the 
theory, for he has turned out an embezzler and 
a rogue, in fact a wolf in sheep's clothing. 

"Auto-suggestion is, as a rule, the child of 
imagination, and depends largely for its exist- 
ence on one's previous experience, training and 
education. It constitutes one of the chief differ- 
ences between somnambulism and the other 
stages of hypnosis, for in the somnambulist we 
find it in its most intense form. Given a verbal 
suggestion of any kind, he will grasp it and 
complete the illusion by using the fruits of his 
imagination (or auto-suggestion), as in the fol- 
lowing instance. I once told an old gentleman 
that he was a fat little school-boy, and he im- 
mediately said, 'Oh, come on and let's play, 
Bob.' 'Play what?' I asked. 'Marbles,' he 
said. 'Or say, let's go for a swim,' and he 
held up two fingers, the school-boy sign for a 
swim, and started off on a hop, step and jump. 

"In the other stages of hypnotism the auto- 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 85 

suggestion element is generally, though not 
always, latent. It is, in fact, like the subject, 
perfectly passive, and is only aroused by some 
suggestion that is distasteful to the hypnotee. It 
is interesting to watch the effects of distasteful 
suggestions upon different subjects; some will 
contract their muscles, others grow red in the 
face, or grind their teeth and clench their 
hands; while others, again, will become dehyp- 
notized, or will ask to be awakened. They 
may also cry out, 'No, no! 'or, 'I don't want to. ' 
" I once saw a lady patient, who was hypnotized 
in the presence of a number of friends, suddenly 
stand up and shout, 'Don't you dare to, or I 
will tell George!' Now this patient had been 
in a passive state for some time, and had not 
been receiving any special attention, there being 
a number of other patients in the room. Al- 
though she was immediately awakened, it took a 
great deal of persuasion on the part of her 
friends and every one present to assure her that 
a certain friend of hers had not taken her in his 
arms and tried to kiss her." 

"Ha!" said I, "I scent a romance here. This 
patient was fond of George. She knew George 
was in the room, and adopted this simple arti- 



86 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

fice to fan his general regard into a fiercer flame. 
It was cleverly done. What was the result?" 

"George was her husband," replied the doc- 
tor, with smiling scorn, "and he was at home." 

"Then all I have to say is," I said, "that her 
remark was very flattering to George. Go on." 

"This sort of auto-suggestion, although rare, 
is undoubtedly very powerful, and its effects are 
lasting. I have already pointed out that there 
is such a thing as latent auto-suggestion, or we 
might more fitlj^ designate it 'the conscience.' 
There are also both voluntary and involuntary 
auto-suggestions. By the latter I mean one that 
is the result of a logical sequence of ideas that 
have arisen from some impulse from without, or 
from some sensation within the body. For ex- 
ample, a subject, or even the person in the wak- 
ing state, is told that it is i p. m,, when it is 
really 1 1 a. m. Immediatel}' he wall experience 
the sensation of hunger. Again he believes 
that his skin is itching and imagines that he has 
some skin-disease. When my mind is occupied 
I may hear the blood throbbing in mj^ ears, the 
natural result of carotid pulsation, and I picture 
to myself certain forms of heart-disease which I 
fear I may have. Just how much of man's ill- 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 87 

health or predisposition to disease is due to this 
fact we will probably never know, although day 
by day we are beginning to recognize it more 
fully, and it is by the conquering or arguing 
away of this auto-suggestion that we obtain such 
wonderful results from treating by hypnosis — of 
course I mean in those cases in which auto-sug- 
gestion was the prime factor in the original pro- 
duction of the disease." 

''Ah, but how are you going to determine 
that?" I asked. 

'' Medical training will tell you at least whether 
the ailment is functional or organic," replied 
the doctor. 

"Hysteria is nothing if not auto-suggestion, 
and no remedy works so well in the cure of 
hysteria as suggestion. Now with reference 
to voluntary auto suggestion — by which I mean 
a suggestion which one voluntarily gives to 
oneself; while we can do this slightly, it seems 
that to obtain the best results, one must needs 
be first put into the hypnotic state. We have 
this fact demonstrated by every hypnotic sub- 
ject. They have all developed the power to 
put themselves to sleep in a few minutes, and 
to wake up at their own will. They can sug- 



88 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

gest away a pain, or a tired feeling. They ob- 
tain from every self-suggestion a practical result. 

"We have all gone to bed with the self-sug- 
gestion that we must be up by a certain hour 
in the morning, and have awakened to find that 
we have kept the appointment with ourselves 
almost to the minute. I have already pointed 
out that auto-suggestion is more powerful than 
suggestion by a second person, so that we find 
the best results in hypnosis produced by working 
along the line of auto-suggestion. To this end, 
it has been suggested that there are five essen- 
tials to successful hypnosis by auto-suggestion: 
I. Willingness. 2. Desire. 3. Faith. 4. Neces- 
sity. 5. Assumption. 

"These should be followed in giving our- 
selves auto-suggestions, whether we are hyp- 
notic subjects or not, and it is the best mode of 
procedure in the production of hypnosis in a 
new subject. 

"A subject must be willing to be hypnotized, 
as you all know. He must also have the desire, 
and although faith is sometimes a later produc- 
tion, it is still a necessity to absolute success; 
and where there is necessity for h3^pnosis and 
auto-suggestion they will seldom be found to fail. 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 89 

Lastl}', the assumption is half the battle in hyp- 
nosis, as in all other things which we desire to 
possess or conquer." 

"Well, what do you think of it?" asked the 
doctor. 

"Not at all a bad paper," I replied. "A little 
redundant here and there, but not objectionably 
so. Vain repetition sometimes impresses more 
than variety of argument. But I think I have 
you on one point." 

"State it," said the doctor. 

"You say that no one can be hypnotized 
against his will?" 

"I certainly do." 

"Then you are wrong, because I myself have 
seen a person transfixed to the floor, and com- 
pelled to sleep, though a few minutes previousl}^ 
he had loudly boasted that no one living could 
hypnotize him." 

"And can you not account for that?" the doc- 
tor inquired. 

"Only by admitting that the operator was 
more strong-willed than the subject." 

"Wait a moment. The subject refuses to be- 
lieve in hypnotism, does he not?" 

"Generally, yes." 



go HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"What is it that convinces him?" 
"As I say, it is the operator's power." 
"Oh no, it isn't," said the doctor. "This is 
a fine point and I am not sorry you mentioned 
it. It is his belief in the operator's power. The 
latter replies to the subject's incredulity some- 
what as follows: 'You say that, but I can tell 
you that before half a minute has gone by you 
will be asleep!' From time to time the opera- 
tor, with his calm but positive assertion, 'rubs it 
in' a little stronger. He shakes the other's con- 
victions, he paralyzes his reasoning powers b}- 
his stronger suggestions. He says this and that 
will happen to you, and the subject half believes 
that he is right. He says this and that is hap- 
pening to you now, and the subject accepts the 
statement. It is only a different way of arriv- 
ing at the same end; to induce a belief in hyp- 
notism is to produce hypnosis. But if the subject 
were as firm as the operator, if the sugges- 
tions on each side were pretty evenly bal- 
anced, there would be no example of hypnotic 
influence in such a case. It is not necessary 
for the subject to submit to the experiment. 
The very fact that the subject submits to the 
experiment is an admission that he is willing." 



\ 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE REASON WHY. — ALTERNATE ENDINGS. 

DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY. NO MIRACU- 
LOUS GIFTS OF WRITING OBTAINED. A 

HELP TO DIFFIDENCE NEVERTHELESS. 

A CARD TRICK. VERY SIMPLE AFTER ALL. 

A CLEVER TRICK PERFORMED BY INVOL- 
UNTARY MUSCTJLAR ACTION. 

"Do you know," I remarked, lighting my 
pipe, "that I had a deep laid plot in my mind 
when I first came to you to be hypnotized?" 

"Had you?" said the doctor, indifferently. 
"Wanted some copy for a newspaoer article, I 
suppose?" 

"That had something to do with it," I ad- 
mitted, "but it went further than that. I wanted 
to conduct a rather curious experiment, and I 
wanted to make capital out of it, whichever 
way it turned out. My idea was briefly this. 
I had written a magazine story, a stupid thing — " 

"Naturally," interjected the doctor. 

— "but quite up to the standard of the aver- 
91 



92 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

age short story," I continued, *^and I wanted 
to try an experiment." 

"Well, well, get on I" he said impatiently. 
"What did you want to try?" 

"I wanted," said I, "to be thrown into a 
hypnotic trance by you. Then I wished you 
to say to me, 'Why, you are a really brilliant 
writer! you are a supremely gifted author — ' " 

"You would have known I was joking," said 
the doctor. I affected not to notice his remark. 

"'You are the recognized wit of the century,' 
you would say," I continued. "'Really, you 
could do much better things than that little 
story you have just completed. But nevermind, 
never mind. It is very good as it is, with the 
exception of the ending. You could improve 
on that, I think. Begin at the line which reads 
" *Doth it please my lord the king?' she asked, 
courtesying demurely" — and rewrite the whole 
of the ending. Make it brilliant; make it witty, 
as only you know how; let it flash and scintil- 
late like— ' " 

"There, there!" said the doctor. "I under- 
stand." 

"Very well, I should then have immediately 
seated myself at the table, seized a pen and 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 93 

written a splendid ending to the story; should 
I not?" 

"You might," said the doctor, non-commit- 
tally. 

"After that," I said, "you would have ob- 
served, 'Will you oblige ine by forgetting what 
you have just done? Now I want you to rewrite 
that story you have just completed; to rewrite 
the ending, beginning at the words, "Doth it 
please my lord the king?" The story is good, 
it is admirable, but I do not think it is worthy 
of your divine power. For of all the writers of 
the present day you alone have the supreme gift 
of presenting pathos. Ah! you melt the hearts 
of your readers ! How your exquisite productions 
enthrall us with their beauty while they affect us 
with their tender melancholy!' Do you catch 
on to the idea? You would have to lay it on 
pretty thick, of course, but in such a wa}^ that I 
should swallow it all." 

"Oh, I think your suspicions would not be 
too alert," remarked the doctor. 

"Well, the question is, should I have done it? 
Because m}^ idea was to have printed the story 
with the two separate endings, written in the 
subjective state. Both endings would start from 



94 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

the same line, but the story itself would be 
printed as it was originally written. Would it 
work?'^ 

"It might," said the doctor again. 

"What do you mean by that?" I asked. 

"Well, merely this," he replied. "You might 
not be an active somnambulist at all. But sup- 
posing you were, the advantage in writing which 
you would gain from the employment of hyp- 
notic suggestion would merely be an increase of 
confidence — forgive me if I say that you do not 
seem to suffer from over-timidity, even now — 
and, secondly, the power of concentrating your 
thought without the forced effort of the will. 
Writing, as I take it, is a matter of voluntary sub 
jectivity. That is to say, every writer who puts 
anything on paper that is worth reading gives 
his whole mind for the time being to his work, 
and is oblivious of his surroundings. This is 
really the subjective state, into which he has 
unconsciously passed." 

"Yes," I said, "but if I were hypnotized 
while I wrote I should be unconscious of effort!" 

" If you are conscious of effort when you write 
now," he said, "you have mistaken \^our vo-" 
cation. You are not a writer. Under the cir • 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



95 



cumstances you mention,'- he continued, "you 
would not be endowed with miraculous gifts of 
wit and pathos. Do you suppose these are 
stored in your brain to be turned on to order? 
If these qualities are not in you already, and if 
they have never yet responded to your call, you 
need aot look for their instant development un- 
der hypnotic suggestion. I am really sorry that 
we did not carry the experiment out, because I 
think your divine pathos would have been very 
funny on paper." 

"But at least," I argued, "there is a chance 
that the experiment might do much for diffident 
writers." 

"I admit that," he answered. "It might, with 
practice, do much good to you also. There 
is room for improvement. It would, however,be 
a matter of practice, I think; you would get 
through your daily task rather easier, I should 
judge; but would that be of real benefit in the 
end?" 

"Undoubtedly," I said, "because I should, 
be able to do so much more work." 

"How about the qualit}^ then ?" asked the 
doctor. "Would that suffer?" 

"You appear to think, from your previous re- 
marks," said I, "that it couldn't very well." 



96 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"The question is, would the writing be worth 
reading when it was done?" suggested the doc- 
tor. "Would you not be more critical, and 
would your judgment not be clearer if you could 
now and then bring your objective mind to bear 
on what you had written, as a man does in his 
waking state?" 

"I could supply all the necessary amend- 
ments," I said, "when I woke up." 

"So you could," he said, "to the finished ar- 
ticle. But would it not be probably an en- 
tirely different production in its completion from 
what it would have been if you had diverted 
your stream of thought by lapses into critical 
consciousness of what you were writing?" 

"The point is," said I, "whether you could 
be critical in the subjective state, as well as in- 
spired; and whether hypnotism would not prove 
a valuable assistant to an author." 

"By jove!" he said, "I believe you have me 
there. It is the first time you have originated 
a decent argument. It would be a pret'y ex- 
periment, and one which I should like to see 
carried through for a month of days. Beyond 
the undoubted facts that your memory would be 
sharpened, your mind concentrated, and your 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 97 

confidence unbounded,! do not think any special 
advantages would accrue," 

"These alone would be enough," I said. 
"Give me these, and add the fact that you could 
suggest to me that at the end of my task I should 
wake up feeling as fresh as a lark, and who 
knows what I might accomplish?" 

"Yes," mused the doctor, "there is some- 
thing in it. We will go carefull}^ into it some 
day together; meanwhile fit yourself for receiv- 
ing suggestion by controlling your mind at in- 
tervals. Bring yourself up short now and then, 
during the day, and make your mind a blank. 
Then let me know if even this does not seem to 
impart renewed activity to the mind when it is, 
so to speak, turned loose again." 

"All right," said I, "I'll try it." 

For some moments I enjoyed my victory in 
silence, then I remarked: 

"By the way, I went to a hypnotic entertain- 
ment last evening, and I came away with the 
idea that there might be something in telepathy 
after all." 

The doctor sniffed audibly. 

"I am inclined to think," I continued, "that 
we should not be too hasty in declining to be- 
lieve." 



98 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"Who declines to believe?" inquired the doc- 
tor, with asperity. "Every student of psycho- 
logical phenomena is anxious to believe. Tell 
me what you saw." 

"Two experiments, or feats, I should rather 
call them," I said, "which struck me with re> 
markable force. They are absolutely unex- 
plainable except by telepathic communication." 
I waited for a remark, but the doctor was silent, 
and I proceeded, 

"The operator chose a subject from the audi- 
ence, and put her into the somnambulistic state — 
she was a lady whom I know quite well, and 
who is absolutely above suspicion as an accom- 
plice or coadjutor of the operator; then taking 
a pack of cards from his pocket, he handed 
them round to the audience to be examined, and 
requested some one in the audience to put a 
small private mark on the face of a card and to 
hand the card so marked to him, the operator, 
with the rest of the pack. Some one near me 
happened to have a new pack of cards in his 
pocket, and he substituted these for the other 
pack, handing his own to the performer, and 
saying,'! have put a mark upon the face of the 
top card in the pack.' Of course the performer 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 99 

must have noticed the exchange, but he prob- 
abl}^ did not wish to make a fuss, and he felt 
sure of success anyhow. So he took the pack, 
and going to the subject, handed her the 
pack just as be received it, with the marked 
card face downwards, upon the top of the 
pack. 'I want you,' he said, 'to look hard at 
this portrait,' and she gazed steadily at the back 
of the card he gave her. 'It is a portrait of your 
sister,' he said, 'and is considered an excellent 
likeness. I want you to remember that portrait, 
so that when you see it again you will be able 
to pick it out at once. Is it a good likeness?' 
*Yes,very good,' she replied. 'Very well,' said 
he, 'look at it again, and be sure to remem- 
ber it. Just describe how she appears there.' 
Well, the subject went into all the details, you 
know — dress, hair, hat, and everything, and 
then he took the cards from her and handed the 
pack to some one to shuffle. He shuffled them 
well, for I watched him, and then returned them 
to the performer. He said to the subject, 'I 
want you to take this handful of portraits, and 
pick out your sister's photograph from among 
them.' You understand that she was only look- 
ing at the backs of the cards. Well, she went 



lOO HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

Straight through the pack, and stopped at a cer- 
tain card. The performer passed it to the man 
beside me. *Is that your card?' he asked. 'It 
certainly is,* he replied. 'Here's my mark.' 
I was very glad he picked this man out, because 
the result of this feat settled his skepticism for 
that evening." 

"Wonderful indeed!" sneered the doctor, 
when I had finished. "So she only saw the 
backs of the cards, eh? Ah, clairvoyance with- 
out doubt — and it convinced the skeptic? Truly 
we are a credulous people." 

"Come, then," I said; "since you're so cock- 
sure, let's have the explanation." 

" Would you like to see me do the trick?" 
he asked, "or would you rather waive that and 
have the explanation at once?" 

"I want the explanation," I said. 

"Very well," he said quietly. "It hardly be- 
comes me to laugh at you, I suppose, seeing 
that it took me some time to satisf}' myself that 
there was nothing in the trick beyond a certain 
quick observation, but after performing it cor- 
rectly myself with an ordinary pack of cards 
while I was in my waking condition, I was 
satisfied that there were at least two ways of 
doing it." 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE lOI 

"Nonsense," I said. 

"I did it six times running with six different 
packs, and that was enough for me! Do you 
know the explanation? No two cards are ever 
alike. Look fixedly at the back of a card in 
any pack, and then see if you can't pick out 
the card any time you want to. You can, if your 
observation is fairly acute." 

"But there's more than that in it," I cried. 

"Of course there is," said the doctor. "That's 
only half the trick. We know how it can be 
done; now to prove how it is done. How do 
you suppose we got at the truth? Simplest thing 
in the world. We woke the subject up and 
asked her how she remembered the photograph. 
She couldn't remember, didn't know how she 
did it. Made her do the trick again, and told 
her that this time she would remember. Woke 
her up again. *How did you know this card?' 
'I knew it by the spot in the corner,' she replied. 
'Didn't you see your sister's face in it?' we 
inquired. 'Not the second time,' she replied; 
'I did when I was first told to look at the card.' 
Very simple, you see. Anything odd in the ap- 
pearance of this particular card was firmly fixed 
in her memory. Yet she didn't know in her 



I02 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

subjective state that that was how she chose the 
right card. Hence she was perfectly honest in 
her work; you see both she and I, she with the 
subjective, I with the objective consciousness, 
performed the trick alike." 

"It is very remarkable," I said, "that these 
things are susceptible of such commonplace ex- 
planations! But Pve got another stickler. Per- 
haps you can solve this. The performer him- 
self declared before Heaven that there could be 
only one explanation of the result — ^telepathy 
clairvoyance.' As for the subject, I assure you 
I know her, and — " 

"It would be all the same if you did not," 
the doctor remarked. "I tell you again that it 
is not often that a medium is conscious of fraud. 
They who condemn her without positive proof 
have very little acquaintance with the conditions 
she is working under. The majority are per- 
fectly honest, and are merely self-deceived." 

"Well, this is what happened," I said. "The 
subject was standing up fast asleep, with her 
eyes shut, and the operator stood in front of 
her. *Ah,' he said, 'you have a pain in your 
tooth.' She made a grimace, as if she had a 
touch of toothache. 'Now it is in your head,' 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 63 

said he, 'now in your shoulder! See, we draw 
it right down the arm; so, and now it is in your 
hand. Is it not?' The subject nodded violently, 
at the same time showing great pain by her ex- 
pression. 'What's to be done?' he said. 'Ah! 
I have it; we will pass the pain into the right- 
hand glove which we draw off; so; and you 
will only feel the pain whenever and wherever 
this glove, touches you.' He touched her then 
with the glove on the forehead, on the arm, and 
on the shoulder, and she complained of pain at 
those places. Then he performed the extraor- 
dinary part of the trick. He took off her other 
glove, and touched her with it, and she felt 
nothing. Then he told her to hold out her 
hands, and he mixed the gloves up behind his 
back and put one into each of her hands. The 
hand which held the right-hand glove dropped 
as if stung, the other remained motionless. This 
happened three or four times in succession, and 
the hand which touched the right-hand glove 
dropped every time. How do you account for 
it?" 

''In this way," said the doctor. "By experi- 
menting with a subject myself I discovered that 
as long as I remembered which of my hands 



I04 Hypnotism up to date! 

held the hypnotized glove, I could do the trick 
successfully. If I forgot, it might come right 
or it might come wrong, but there was no cer- 
tainty in it. This seemed curious. Could I 
convey this sense of perception to the subject's 
mind? I practiced for half an hour steadily and 
then I hit it. Quite unconsciously to myself, 
I, knowing which hand of mine held the im- 
portant glove, advanced it perhaps half an inch, 
perhaps a quarter of an inch — aye, even less than 
a hair's breadth further forward than the other. 
The result was that it was the first to touch her 
hand, and whichever of her hands was first 
touched, was the hand which she believed to 
have been touched by the affected glove. This 
forward movement of the hand on my part was 
involuntary. But I found that unless I deliber- 
ately advanced the other, it would naturally 
take the foremost position. That's the explana- 
tion." 

"It is enough," I said; "I pass for to-day." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

A REVIEW OF A POPULAR ROMANCE. FALSE 

PREMISES AND THEREFORE ERRONEOUS 
CONCLUSIONS. OBSESSION. NONSENSE. 

*< I FEEL much annoyed to-day," said the doc 
tor; "excessively annoyed." 

He held a book in his hand, and resumed his 
pacing up and down the room as I dropped into 
m}^ accustomed seat. 

"It is incredible," he resumed, "that a man 
can so prostitute his talents as to try to make 
people believe that wrong is right." 

"Perhaps it /aright to him," I said. "It all 
depends on the point of view, you see." 

"He knows!" said the doctor emphatically. 
"The author of this book has deliberately set 
himself to surround his subject with an air of 
devilish mystery. With consummate art he has 
depicted the gradual and unwilling, but complete 
subjection of a carefully trained, logical mind, 

105 



I06 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

to the insidious wiles of a woman endowed with 
hypnotic powers." 

"Oh, ho! that is it?" said I. "No wonder 
you're annoyed. He is trenching on your do- 
main." 

"He is not," cried the doctor, with some 
fierceness. "He is pandering to the love for 
sensation which permeates all readers of imag- 
inative fiction. His motive is popularity. He 
is a man of intellect himself, who has enchained 
his readers in his previous works by his care- 
ful analysis of the process of induction. His 
detective stories are almost works of genius. He 
has made induction all but a science; certainly 
a study. And now for what paltry motive, un- 
less popularity, can he have stooped to publish 
to the world such a tissue of misrepresentations, 
false assertions, and illogical deductions as are 
contained in this book?" 

"What is the book, and who is the author?" 
I asked. 

"'A Parasite,' by Conan Doyle," he replied. 

"Well, what does it matter?" I asked. "No 
one will take his fascinating stor}^ seriously out- 
side of his coterie of readers." 

"And how do you define the limit to that cir- 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE lO^ 

cle of readers?" he asked. '^Does not all the 
world read 'fiction,' which is or should be, truth 
set forth in an attractive form? What right has 
any man to juggle with the truth ? Besides, he 
has not merely supposed a case, and left his 
readers to draw their own conclusions. " Poe 
did that in his wonderful 'Mesmeric Revela- 
tions,' but though we know he erred in his con- 
ception of hypnotism, he did not vest the power 
with all imaginary diabolism." 

'^Perhaps Doyle is a firm disbeliever in hyp- 
notism," I suggested. 

" It is not that," said the doctor. "That would 
be nothing. Half the world disbelieves in hyp- 
notism, because it knows nothing about it. But 
this man, with a half knowledge of his subject, 
has chosen to deliberately pervert his knowl- 
edge; not, as I say, from conviction that h^^p- 
notism is evil, but because the subject if treated 
as an evil could be made repellently fascinating 
to his readers. He has hired himself at so much 
per line to disseminate error, and to strengthen 
ignorance. Oh, there is no end to the harm this 
book will do." 

''What's the good of making a fuss?" I said. 
"You don't even know that he was not sincere 



Io8 HYPNOTISM UP TO DA'tfi 

when he wrote this thing. Perhaps he really 
believed that people had better let hpynotism 
alone. At the worst, he can only have hindered 
the spread of knowledge on this subject a little 
while, and may even indirectly have turned at- 
tention more strongly towards it." 

"He may, certainly, with the few," said the 
doctor. *'But he has increased popular prej- 
udice, which is a potent factor in regard to public 
progress. What percentage of educated people, 
do you suppose, habitually or even occasionally 
read scientific pamphlets on hypnotism?" 

"Not a large one," I admitted. "But remem- 
ber that even scientific papers on this subject are 
very contradictory. I have myself read all sorts 
of conflicting theories concerning it. Perhaps 
the popular novel of the future will deal with 
hypnotic suggestion in the light of a blessing 
rather than a terror." 

"Let's get what comfort we can out of the 
fact at any rate," said the doctor, "that research 
brings knowledge, and that knowledge will dis- 
pel the popular disbelief, or, worse still, fear." 

" Instead of railing at the book," I said, " why 
don't you disprove its statements?" 

"And thereby advertise the author and his 
handiwork?" he queried. 



MYPNOtlSM UP TO DATE lO^ 

"The author does not need advertising," I 
said, "and it doesn't matter if people are anx- 
ious to read the book if they do so merely to 
laugh at the absurdity of its matter." 

"I could expose the writer as a quack," said 
the doctor. 

"You would have some difficulty in doing 
that," I answered; "and denunciation is not 
argument." 

"H'm," he grunted, "well, I suppose the 
best weapon to employ against presumption is 
ridicule." 

"Read me some parts of the book," I said. 
The doctor turned over the leaves absentl3\ 

"It is well written," he said, with unwilling 
admiration. "It is rather powerfully written ; 
hence its danger. If it were the work of a no- 
body, it would be of no account, in spite of the 
neatness of its style. But it is his name that 
makes it dangerous, Briefly its motij may be 
condensed into a few words. There is a man 
named Austin Gilroy, Professor of Physiology 
at some university, and there is a woman, a 
cripple, who walks with a crutch, a Miss Pene- 
losa, clairvoyant, hypnotist, and she-devil. The 
Professor is a materialist, a skeptic. He is en- 



I to ftYPNdTISM UP TO DATfi 

gaged to a beautiful girl. The first evidence he 
receives of the supernatural powers of Miss 
Penelosa is when his fiancee visits him one 
morning after breakfast, and informs him that 
their engagement is at an end. It would have 
been more delicate, perhaps, if she had written to 
apprise him of the fact, and more natural, but 
she is supposed to be under post-hypnotic sug- 
gestion. The Professor stammers and staggers 
under the blow. He says it is very sudden. 
She replies tersely that all is over. There is no 
hint, however, of her intention of being a sister 
to him. Here is the passage: 

"' "It is useless, Austin. All is over." Her 
voice was cold and measured; her manner 
strangely formal and hard.' Shortly after this," 
continued the doctor, "when the lad}^ has gone 
home, the Professor opens a note upon his desk, 
given him b}^ the hypnotist the night before, in 
v^'hich he reads that this is onl}? an experiment 
to convince him of the power of post-hypnotic 
suggestion. He rushes to his fiancee's home, and 
she greets him warmly. He questions her closely 
in what manner she had passed the morning, and 
she denies having been out of the house. She 
is much hurt when he almost doubts her word. 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE III 

The Professor becomes convinced that the ex- 
periment was conducted without her consent, 
and does not inform her of what has transpired. 
He is, however, reluctantly forced to admit to 
himself that hypnotism is a fact. 

"Now I need hardly tell you," said the doc- 
tor, "that so far from the experiment as a whole 
being possible, it could never have been even 
begun; because the subject, the fiancee, having 
no wish to break off her engagement when in 
the waking state, would have refused to enter- 
tain the suggestion when she was hypnotized. 
We are told also that it was given her by means 
of a whisper in her ear. It would have required 
a very impressive repetition of each word to 
give the suggestion sufficient grip on the sub- 
ject's consciousness to be even recalled to her 
mind at the appointed time, and it would have 
been dismissed before it took shape in her brain. 
In the case of an unwilling subject, I do not 
think it would even recur to her at all. I said 
just now that the author's deductions were illog- 
ical. I did him an injustice. They are logical 
enough. The point is that the whole argument 
of the book is untrue, because his premises are 
impossible^, 



112 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"Here is a conversation which took place 
shortly afterwards between the hj^pnotist and 
the Professor. The latter is speaking. 

'''And if the suggestion had been to assas- 
sinate me?' 

"'She would most inevitably have done bo.' 

"'But this is a terrible power,' I cried. 

"'It i'^, as you say, a terrible power,' she an- 
swered gravely. *And the more you know of 
it, the more terrible will it seem to you.' 



"'It is possible for an operator to gain com- 
plete control over his subject,' she continued; 
'without any previous suggestion he may make 
him do whatever he likes.' 

"'Would he have lost his own will-power 
then?' 



"'It would be overridden by another stronger 



one. 



"'Well, it does not entirely depend upon that 
(/. e, strong will). Many have strong wills 
which are not detachable from themselves. The 
thing is to have the gift of projecting it into 
another person, and superseding their own. I 
find the power varies with my own strength and 
health.' 

"'Practically you sent your soul into another 
person's body ?' 

"'Well, you might put it that way.' 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE II3 

"When asked if Ihere were no danger to her 
own health she replies, 'There might be; you 
have to be careful never to let your own con- 
sciousness absolutely go, otherwise you might 
experience some difficulty in finding your way 
back again. You must always preserve the con- 
nection, as it were.' 

"Then," said the doctor, "the professor goes 
away and wrestles manfully with himself. But 
he is forced to admit there is something in it, 
and when on the next day he consents to be 
hypnotized as an experiment, he is thrown into 
a delightful slumber. The experiments are re- 
peated on several successive evenings, and 
shortly afterwards a complication presents it- 
self. 

"Attracted by his clear Spanish features and 
dark eyes, the hypnotist falls in love with him. 
He records the fact in his diary with scientific 
accuracy of detail. He writes that for some time 
there have been signs which he has brushed 
aside, and refused to think of. He has tried to 
believe that they were to be accounted for by 
her ardent West Indian temperament. But last 
night at the close of the experiment, their hands 
were locked together, and he felt compelled to 
talk to her of love. How he would have loathed 
himself if he had yielded to the temptation of 



: 14 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

the moment! Thank God! he was strong 
enough to spring up, and to hurry from the 
room. He feared that he was rude, too, but 
slie knew that he was an engaged man; she 
understood how he was placed. 

"He fairly gasps, this professor," said the 
doctor, "at the idea that this woman should 
wish him to make love to her. I have yet to 
learn that the fact of a man's engagement to 
o;ie woman is sufficient to debar another from 
trying to secure him." 

"I have certainly heard," I admitted, "that 
tlie fact you mention is commonly supposed to 
lend interest to the pursuit, and zest to the cap- 
ture." 

"The professor perceives that his struggles are 
useless," continued the doctor, "and actually 
finds that he has gone so far as to profess violent 
love for this woman, while sitting at her feet. 
He determines that he will break the spell which 
holds him, and to this end, locks his door, and 
slips the key outside underneath the sill. He 
then composes himself for a comfortable evening 
on the sofa with one of Dumas' novels. But 
suddenly — suddenly, he is gripped and dragged 
from the couch. He claws at the coverlid; he 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE II5 

clings to the wood-work. But he goes. He 
fishes the key out wi.h a paper-knife from the 
place where he has hidden it, and snatching up 
a photograph of himself, writes something across 
the back of it, and thrusts it into his pocket. He 
fiies to the house of the hypnotist. She is re- 
clining upon a sofa, and a tiger-skin rug has 
been partly thrown over her. She is pale and 
thin, having just recovered from an illness. He 
kisses her hand passionatel}^, presents her with 
the photograph, and tells of his love for her, of 
his regret at hei illness, and of his joy at her 
recovery. He rejoices in his slavery, and when 
she strokes his head with her hand, I have no 
doubt he purrs audibly. Here," said the doc- 
tor, "I wish to quote verbatim. Listen: 

'"And then came the change, the blessed 
change.' 

("This is taken from his diary, you under- 
stand.) 

"'Never tell me that there is not a Providence! 
I was on the brink of perdition. My feet were 
on the edge. Was it a coincidence that at that 
very moment help should come? No, no, no, 
there is a Providence, and His hand has drawn 
me back. There is something in the universe 
stronger than this devil-woman with her tricks. 
Ah! what a balm to my heart to think so!' 



Il6 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"A little melodrama of this kind," said the 

doctor, "impresses the masses wonderfully. 

" *I have tried to do too much,' she whispered. 
'I was not strong enough. You won't leave me, 
Austin? This is a passing weakness. If 3'ou 
will only give me five minutes I shall be myself 
again. Give me the small decanter from the 
table in the window.' 

"We must presume from this," said the doc- 
tor, "that this power is strengthened by the use 
of alcohol. 

"But the Professor had regained his soul. 
His soul, mark you I Her influence had cleared 
away, and left him stern and aggressive; bit- 
terly, fiercely aggressive. It was the savage, 
murderous passion of the revolted serf. 

"'The brandy,' she gasped, 'the brandy.' 
"The professor took the decanter,and poured 
it over the roots of a palm in the window. 

"It was effective, no doubt," said the doctor, 
"but I am not aware that he had any right to 
meddle with her cordials." 

"It was rather rough on the palm," I said. 

"Then," continued the doctor, "the professor 

had his innings. 

"'You vile woman! You shameless creature! 
You knew how I stood. And 3^et you used your 
vile power to bring me to your side.' 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 1 7 

''I cannot forbear marveling," said the doc- 
tor, "at the stress this gentle professor lays upon 
her knowledge of his engagement! 'You knew 
how I stood.' Can you imagine a more lamb- 
like bleat? But he pays her out and goes home 
with a glow of inward satisfaction. Of course 
Miss Penelosa's love then turns to hate, and the 
professor had a very bad time of it. How he 
curses his fatal gift of beauty as he looks at the 
glass! 'Ah,' he cries, *when I look in the glass 
and see my own dark eyes and clear-cut Spanish 
face I long for a vitriol splash, or a bout of the 
smallpox.' 

"His engagement keeps him near the upas 
tree; otherwise, like a man, he would fly the 
danger. 

"'If I were free,' he says, 'my course womd 
be obvious. I should start at once, and travel 
in Persia.' 

"Why Persia,! wonder? However, to resume. 
The hypnotist pursues the professor remorse- 
lev«!sly. First she turns him into a buffoon, so 
that he loses his professorship; then she tries to 
make him rob a bank. When delivering a 
lecture, he would begin well enough and until 
the weird seizure came, would make good 



I 1 8 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

points, but suddenly he would begin to talk 
nonsense, make silly jokes, propound conun- 
drums, propose toasts, sing snatches of songs, 
and even personally abuse the members of his 
class." 

"Very jolly for the class," I said, "I suppose 
his lectures were well attended?" 

"Crowded," said the doctor, "with students 
who came to see and hear what the eccentric 
professor would do or say next. After tr3nng 
to break into the bank with a chisel — a curi- 
ously inefficient instrument for the purpose, I 
should have thought — he naturally raves against 
the lady who has obsessed him. 

"'Ah, that accursed woman,' he cries. 'That 
thrice accursed woman! She has taken my 
professorship; now she would take my honor.' 

"'My physical condition,' he remarks, 'is 
deplorable! I suffer from perpetual hiccough, 
and ptosis of the left eyelid I' 

"Might not the hiccough — " I began. 

'Brandy?" inquired the doctor. "Possibly! 
But to continue. A friend of his comes one 
afternoon to pay him a visit, and the professor 
knocks him into the mud, and kicks his hat 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE II9 

after him. One of the professor's nands is 
greatly swollen the next day, and he remarks 
parenthetically that *God knows he has never 
had the heart to hurt a fly.' A statement which 
his battered friend finds some difficulty, when 
they next meet, in accepting. Then the idea of 
murdering this woman comes to this much bad- 
gered professor. 

'"Murder! it has an ugly sound. But 3^ou 
don't talk of murdering a tiger. Let her have 
a care now.' 

"Finally by her influence he is about to throw 
vitriol in the face of his fiancee, from which 
awful fate she is rescued by a delay in meeting 
him, and when she arrives, the fit has passed. 
He remembers what he was going to do, and 
rushed out of the house with murder in his 
heart, but on inquiring at the door of the house 
where the hypnotist abides he is met with the 
news that she expired that afternoon at half- 
past three, the exact time of his release. And 
so ends the story," said the doctor. 



CHAPTER IX. 

COURAGE CAN BE DEVELOPED. — STRONG AND 

WEAK WILLS. DEFINITION OF SUGGESTION, 

SIMPLE EXAMPLES. HYPNOTISM NOT AN 

INFLUENCE FOR EVIL. DIFFICULTIES IN 

THE WAY OF CLASSIFYING THE STATES. 

THE MESMERIC PASS IS A SUGGESTION. 

PATENT MEDICINES. 

"What is fear?" I inquired. 

"Generally speaking, it is absence of cour- 
age," the doctor replied. 

"Then you make courage a virtue natural to 
man?" I said. 

"Say that it is inherent in the natural man," 
he answered, "and you get the point." 

"So habitual fear or cowardice is a nervous 
disease?" I continued. 

"Generally, yes. It is a depressed state of 
the mind, unreasoning, blind, ranging all the 
way from apprehension to madness." 

"Then," said I, finally, "fear is curable by 

hypnotism ?" 

"Undoubtedly," said the doctor. 
120 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 121 

"And you can implant courage?" 

"Courage is not implanted by us," he replied, 
"it is there already. We only reason it into 
activity, if I may so express myself. Are you 
referring to moral or physical courage?" he 
asked. 

"To physical," I answered. "Moral cour- 
age, as I understand it, is a question of educa- 
tion." 

"A question of the acceptance and applica- 
tion of education," amended the doctor. 

"Never mind," I said. "The point that inter- 
ests me is whether you can take a youth who is 
inclined to be a coward, and make him physi- 
cally courageous." 

"There is not a doubt of it," replied the doc- 
tor; "we do it by the simplest process of reason- 
ing." 

"And can you turn a weak will into a strong 
one?" 

"There are no such things as weak and strong 
wills," he answered. "That is a suggestion 
which you have picked up from your teachers, 
friends and relations, and it is calculated to 
work, if it has not done so already, a great 
amount of harm. A man who believes that he 



122 HYPNOTISxM UP TO DATE 

can do a certain thing does it, whereas a man 
wl)o does not believe, does not do it, and if he 
attempts it at all, fails to carry it through. A 
strong v\ill and a weak will are only expressions 
of a character which is susceptible to change. 
Thus a strong-willed man may be diffident in the 
presence of a small woman. A domineering 
man is really one who believes in himself dur- 
ing his domineering periods, whenever they 
occur, and if he has gained an ascendency over 
you, for instance, it is because you are willing 
to believe that he is more powerful or more 
clever than yourself," 

'But supposing he reall}' is?" I persisted. 

"How would you know it?" the doctor asked. 
"Did he tell 3'ou himself, or did your friends 
say so? Did you read it in the papers? Or did 
the conviction come from yourself?" 

"My own sense told me so, perhaps," I an- 
swered. 

"That is, it was a case of auto-suggestion, 
but had your auto-suggestions been more favor- 
able, you might have rivaled this man who 
was, as you say, strong-willed." 

"I might have wished to," I said. 

"There is all the difference in the world,'' he 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



123 



replied, "between a wish and a desire. A wish 
is an idle thing, but a desire means business. 
There is no desire in a man which he cam ut 
attain. It rests with himself." 

"How do you define suggestion?" I ai^-ked, 
waiving the point. 

"Ir is not a very easy task to condense a defi- 
nition of the word. It has been said that by 
this term we mean every thought, motion, scene, 
object, sound, command, taste, smell — everj^- 
thing,in fact, that causes some involuntary effect 
in a living being, the impulse to which passes 
through the intellect. There are direct and 
indirect suggestions. Of the latter it is only 
necessary to take one familiar example. You 
ask the time — one o'clock — suggestion, hunger 
and lunch. I should like to go more fully, 
though, into the discussion of verbal or direct 
sugge.stion, and its influence on a person in the 
wr:king state. But I haven't the time. How- 
ever, here are a couple of instances. The child 
is the most receptive of living beings. Every 
gesture and remark of parents, friends, nurses 
or companions carries a suggestion with it. A 
mother brings the child to my office, and the 
youngster on entering the room peeps shyly 



1 24 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

round the skirts of her mother. Very possibly 
that lady remarks unthinkingly, *Oh, she won't 
go to you. She is so bashful and shy in the 
presence of strangers I' Direct verbal sugges- 
tion. Result, instant acceptance of the sugges- 
tion by the child and a habit of confirmed 
shyness is formed, against which only counter- 
suggestions of the most positive kind will 
prevail." 

"Just to go back for a minute," I said. 
"Why, if you can influence through hypnosis 
so strongly for good, is it not to be dreaded as 
an equally powerful influence for evil?" 

"Because an evil result is impossible unless 
the subject is habitually evil," replied the doc- 
tor, "and by 'habitually' I mean, whose train- 
ing has been generally bad." 

"That doesn't cover the case," I said. 
"Suppose an evil operator suggested a crime to 
a weak subject, and the subject committed it; 
he would have done it under hypnotic influence." 

"No, because, don't you see," said the doctor, 
"that you are blaming hypnotism for something 
with which it has nothing to do? Given a crim- 
inal operator and a criminal subject, and the 
result might be evil, but the subject would have 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 25 

been just as strongly influenced, and would have 
committed the crime more surely and more in- 
telligently if he had been awake. You miss the 
point which those who have not studied hypno- 
tism are so needlessly worried about,- that an 
evil hypnotist may induce a moral subject to 
commit wrong. That is where they think the 
danger lies — and that, I say, is impossible." 

"Ah, I see," said I. "Well, never mind go- 
ing any further into suggestion. I recognize its 
importance very fully. Tell me what you con- 
sider to be the most important function of hyp- 
nosis." 

"I should say, briefly, the alleviation of suf- 
fering, both mental and physical." 

"Can you minister to a mind diseased — cure 
a settled grief, as well as, say, a headache? 
How, — by argument?" 

"By simple argument when the subject is 
hypnotized. You should witness an experiment 
of the kind. We go slowly and quietly over 
the same ground, explaining, arguing, pointing 
out the foolishness of this, or the wrong of that, 
and the subject in time receives its lesson and 
believes. Belief is cure. The beauty of it is 
that the subject is not inclined to argue, but is 



I 26 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

inclined to believe. In a word, he is open to 
reason,but will not reason with himself. Hence, 
conviction." 

"Dentists should make use of hypnotism," I 
said. 

"Some of them are wise enough to do so 
already," he replied. "If I had my way a 
training in hypnotism should be part of the 
course, not only of medical students, but of every 
living boy and girl. And the first lesson which 
they would be required to commit to memory 
would be the suggestion that the}^ were not 
born with a natural inclination to sin." 

"You'd have to revolutionize Christian teach- 
ing then," I remarked. 

"Well, we won't go into that. What else do 
you want to know?" asked the doctor. 

"I want to know how you classify the differ- 
ent hypnotic states," I said. 

"It can't be done," he replied. 

"Has it never been tried?" 

"Oh, yes, some divide it into three, some 
into five. There are, I gather from my own 
small number of experiments, some hundred 
different states, each of which is capable of sub- 
division. No man under hypnotic influence is 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 27 

exactly like another. You, for example, though 
not even in a state of simple sleep, had become 
cataleptic when your muscles were rigid." 

"But I thought catalepsy was trance," I 
said, — "a deep and abiding trance." 

"Not at al^" said the doctor. "There may 
be cataleps}^ and trance combined. But I can- 
not possibly go into all the particulars," he said. 
"It would take hours." 

"Well, but about the somnambulistic state," 
I said, "which is, I suppose, the most interest- 
ing?" 

"Yes, if active," replied the doctor. 

"What's the proportion of active somnambu- 
lists in persons hypnotized?" 1 asked. 

"Ten per cent," he answered. 

''Tell me, is it necessary to make use of the 
passes, gestures etc., which operators employ 
to send their subjects to sleep?" I asked. 

"You know yourselt that itisnol necessary," 
he responded, "but we do it to heighten or 
strengthen the suggestion. It is easier for you 
to believe that I am going to send you to sleep 
if I piess my hands over your forehead; or if I 
tell you your arm is paralyzed, you will more 
readily accept it if I touch your elbow. To 



128 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

Strengthen the assertion that there is nothing in 
the passes beyond this, I can assure you that I 
have put more than one good subject to sleep, 
over the telephone." 

''That seems conclusive that gestures or 
passes are not always necessary," I said. 

"They are never necessary," he replied, 
"but they are generally useful. There is one 
thing that should not be lost sight of in hypnotic 
effects," he continued. "It is always desirable 
to induce a feeling of pleasure in the patients 
when they are going under the influence, and 
some patients may by means of their auto-sug- 
gestiveness feel anything but happy as hypnosis 
is produced. It is easy to offset this b}^ previous 
suggestion, but I knew a dentist who achieved 
his point by starting his musical box and the 
hypnotic passes at the same time. The plan 
worked admirably." 

"Hypnotism will cure drunkenness, I sup- 
pose?" 

"It is the only cure," replied the doctor 
gravely. "This is a positive statement, but I 
make it on these grounds. Drunkenness is a 
disease which can only be cured by suggestion. 
I wouldn't give five cents for any local treat- 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



129 



ment. It isn't the bichloride of gold that re 
moves the drunkard's longing for drink. The 
injection into his arm so many times a day is a 
suggestion to him that he is losing his unnatural 
craving. He is told by the doctors that he is 
progressing favorably, and that in a certain time 
he will be cured. That is all very well while 
the suggestion retains its power. But it is not 
sufficiently strong to subdue the disease, and in 
the course of time it breaks out afresh. Had 
hypnotism been employed with scientific med- 
ical treatment there would have been no re- 
lapses. I solemnl}'^ assure you I have never lost 
a single case treated by hypnotic suggestion. 
Now, which would strike you as the most diffi- 
cult to cure, drunkenness or gambling?" 

"I should say gambling," I replied. '* Be- 
cause it is not a disease." 

"Wrong again," said the doctor. "It must 
at least be a nervous disorder, or hypnotism 
would not remove it." 

"But gambling is a voluntary action," I 
cried. 

"Very seldom," he answered; "but if it were, 
we remove the desire to gamble. The answer 
to my query is that one is as easy to cure as the 
other." 



130 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"For a doctor," I said, "you don't seem, if I 
may say so, to attach much importance to med- 
icine." 

"I attach great importance to it," he replied, 
"but I attach more to the hypnotic or even 
direct suggestion that is given with it. You 
know, perhaps, that there are about fifty differ- 
ent schools of medicine, the Allopaths, Homoeo- 
paths, Hydropaths, etc. Each has its followers. 
Each points to its cures. Their methods are 
diametrically opposite, but they are all more or 
less successful. Why? You don't require to 
be told." 

"Suggestion?" said I. 

"Undoubtedly," he answered. "Patent med- 
icines are, on careful investigation, acknowl- 
edged to have effected hundreds and thousands 
of seemingly marvelous cures. Did you ever 
read one of those suggestively worded adver- 
tisements? Of course you have. It is impos- 
sible to escape them. What could be more 
alluring to the sufferer than to read that *Mary's 
case had been considered hopeless by the doc- 
tors, and she had been left to die while still a 
young woman; but by the mighty grace, etc., 
etc.'? They do much good, these people with 
their trumpery wares. They bring hope to the 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE I3I 

sufferer, and she buys seventeen or two dozen 
bottles of the stuff and gets well. Of course, 
the cure is in herself." 

"I take it," said I, ''that hopefulness is the 
normal condition of man?" 

"Certainly. When hope is absolutely dead, 
disease gets firm hold. It doesn't matter 
whether it be real or imaginary, it is equally 
fatal. Revive hope and all will be well. 
Melancholia is a thing we often have to combat. 
It is very easy." 

"Not always, surely." 

"Always," said the doctor, "with the aid of 
hypnotism." 

"Well, there is one thing it cannot do," I 
said. "It may cure every nervous disease under 
the sun, but it cannot set a broken limb." 

"No, but a doctor with the assistance of hyp- 
notism can set that limb without pain to the 
patient and command the sleep for him that is 
necessary to recovery. Don't you see what a 
friend, what a powerful ally h3^pnotism is to the 
surgeon? What is chloroform in comparison 
with this agent, simple, innocuous, inexpensive? 
Great Heavens! to think that men can turn their 
backs with indifference when this God given 
power is ready to their hand I" 



CHAPTER X. 

RESISTANCE OF THE SUBJECT IS NOT WEAKENED. 
A child's AUTO SUGGESTION. AN EX- 
PERIMENT VV^ITH CRIMINAL SUGGESTION, 

A LIKELY SUBJECT. CATALEPTIC AND SOM- 
NAMBULIC. A BLOODTHIRSTY ATTACK. — 

THEORY SUSTAINED. RESPIRATION AL- 
TERED AT WILL. INVESTIGATION MAY BE 

LOOKED FOR. 

"Hullo! "said the doctor, when I entered his 
room on the following day "I thought you'd 
gonel" 

'^VVe certainly said good-bye/' I admitted, 
"but I have come back, you see, and have 
brought my trunk. I'm going to stay awhile 
— Trunk and hands and feet," I added, seeing 
that the doctor looked alarmed, — "an anatomical 
joke, 3^ou know!" 

"I don't know!" he replied wearily. "How- 
ever, I'm glad to see you, What do you want 

132 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 33 

to ask me about now ? I see a question in your 

eye." 

"I am not satisfied yet," I replied, "as to the 
possibility or otherwise of weakening the will 
of the subject through continued suggestion. 
For instance, although I am ready to admit that 
you could not make a man of good morals com- 
mit a crime, could you not,by varying the sug- 
gestion, by twisting it round in all manner of 
ways, make him see that what you wished him 
to do was really not a heinous offense after all? 
Could you not blunt the edge of his instincts? 
Would there always be the same resistance?" 

" I have always found the resistance as strong," 
said the doctor, "at the last as at the first. 
There is no perceptible difference in the sub- 
ject's revolt against the suggestion offered and 
insisted upon, even if that suggestion is varied, 
as you say, in all manner of wa3^s, and even if 
it is cairied over from day to day." 

"Then you cannot wear the moral instinct 
out?" 

"No, the constant dropping that wears away 
a stone, does not apply to such a case. It might 
if the man were awake; but his resistance is 
really more active when he is asleep. In the 



134 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



waking State there is more material relationship. 
I should say emphatically that an experiment of 
this nature, carried on from day to day, actually 
meets with more resistance from the subject at 
the last than at the first, and if persisted in would 
probably prevent the subject from sleeping at 
all. Suppose that for three days I had endeav- 
ored to make a subject do a certain thing which 
he was unwilling to do, and suppose that he was 
willing to accept the suggestion that in his wak- 
ing state he would remember nothing that I had 
said to him during hypnosis, and admitting for 
a moment — and this is an extreme admission — 
that he might actually forget in his waking state 
all that had actually occurred in previous hyp- 
noses, still, when hypnosis was induced upon 
the fourth day, the subject would be fortified by 
the remembrance of the resistance which he had 
previously made to this suggestion, and would, 
as I say, be less likely to accept it than at 
first." 

"Did you ever try to mould the will of a hyp- 
notized child?" I asked. 

"Yes. I had an interesting example of the 
impossibility of breaking down auto-suggestion 
in such a case some years ago. I have always 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE * ^35 

regarded this as a very valuable example, since 
it can not be classed as a 'laboratory experi- 
ment.' The child was only five years old — too 
young even to understand that the suggestion I 
wished her to accept was for her own ultimate 
benefit. The matter of it was this. The child's 
teeth had given out two years before they should 
have done so, and she was, in consequence, put 
to great trouble in masticating her food. Her 
father, a physician, came to me, and asked if 
anything could be done to quiet her fears while 
a temporar}^ filling was put in her teeth. He 
had previously induced her to submit to the 
operation, but the dentist employed had hurt 
her, and she now regarded him as her enemy, 
and would not allow him to touch her. It 
seemed to me that the child was too young to 
yield to hypnotic suggestion, but I agreed to 
try what could be done. The next evening, 
accordingly, I went to the house and was intro- 
di ced (of course the mother was in the secret) as 
a friend staying in the city for a day or two. 
We romped with the children, and I showed 
them all sorts of tricks, paying special attention 
to this little girl always, and singling her out 
from the others. Well, she became jealous of 



136 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

her sisters if I seemed to neglect her at all, and 
later on I said that I would show her a new 
game, and that she was to act the principal 
part in it. This new game consisted in putting 
her to sleep. In a little while, under the verbal 
suggestion method, she went sound asleep, and 
for fifteen minutes the game of romps with the 
other children proceeded. There was no doubt 
that the child was asleep, and the father satisfied 
himself on the point of her insensibility to pain 
by running a pin through her arm under my 
direction. It was agreed then that I should hyp- 
notize her the next day in the dentist's office, 
and her teeth should be filled while she was 
asleep. At the time appointed we met in the 
dental ] arlor, and the little girl was very glad 
to see me. The purpose of her visit had been 
carefully concealed from her, and she was quite 
willing to play the game again which had 
amused her on the previous evening. In a few 
minutes she was sound asleep, and showed no 
trace of sensibility to pain when her eyelid was 
lifted and the ball touched; nor did she feel the 
prick of a pin. I carried her to the dentist's 
chair, and when she was comfortably arranged 
told her to open her mouth, and to keep it open. 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 37 

She did so. I told her she could not shut it, 
and she could not. She tried to shut it at my 
bidding, and could not. Everything seemed ripe 
for the operation, and the dentist came quietly 
forward while I talked gently to the youngster. 
At the first touch of his hand on her mouth the 
jaws came together with a snap, and I could 
not by any means in my power get her to open 
her mouth again. She simply would not. It 
was no use, the operation had to be abandoned, 
and the child woke up crying at my insistence. 
Observe that the auto-suggestion of a child of 
five years was too powerful for the parents, my- 
self, and the dentist combined." 

"Do you suppose the child would have ob- 
jected if you had performed the operation your- 
self?" 

"No; if I had been a dentist, 1 am quite sure 
that I could have filled that little thing's teeth 
without pain, and it would all have worked in 
as a part of the game." 

"If I could see an experiment myself bearing 
on the relationship of hypnotism and crime," I 
said, "I should be very glad. Could you not 
manage this for me?" 

The doctor reflected. "How about your 
train?" he inquired. 



138 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"It has gone without me," I answered, "sol 
have the whole day to spare." 

"If you can be here at three o'clock this 
afternoon," he said, "I will see what can be 
done. There is a young man in the city here 
who was used by a traveling professor of hyp- 
notism to illustrate the theory that crime could 
be committed through the agency of hypnotic 
suggestion. His mode of illustration was to 
cause this subject to assault a man on the stage, 
and to steal a sum of money from him. The 
usual procedure was adopted — rousing the sub- 
ject's cupidity, working on his passions, sug- 
gesting immunity from punishment, etc., — of 
course, with great success. The assault and 
robbery took place, and the audience gasped. 
Now, I don't know this young man personally, 
but I have heard that he is not a lovable char- 
acter when he is in his normal condition. He 
has been in several scrapes of a serious nature, 
and if we were describing his moral character ac- 
cording to copy-book, we should call it evil. If 
you like, I will try to get him here this afternoon, 
and will use every endeavor to make him com- 
mit a crime — a real crime. It must, of course, 
still remain 'a laboratory experiment,' since it 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 39 

takes place in this office, but we will endeavor 
to so arrange details that if he carries out my 
suggestion literally we may believe that there 
is a relation possible between crime and hyp- 
notism. I am going to make him stab a person 
with this stage dagger — you see that it looks and 
feels like a real knife, but the blade runs back 
to the hilt, so that injury from a blow with this 
weapon is impossible. He will not be aware of 
this, however, and then, if he buries the knife, 
as he supposes, in the heart of the victim, he will 
have done much to shake my convictions on the 
point. Even this would not be conclusive evi- 
dence, however, because he may in his subjec- 
tive state consider that if he commit a crime in 
my office, I am responsible, and not he; where- 
as,, if I suggested that some days after date he 
should commit a crime at a distance from me, 
he would reflect that I should not be near him 
to assume the blame, and on those grounds 
might refuse to carry out the suggestion. There- 
fore, I say that the experiment cannot be con- 
sidered conclusive, but I can hardly believe that 
he can be even induced to strike a man in the 
breast with an instrument which he supposes to 
be a real weapon. We shall see. Can you 
come.'^" 



I4O HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

"I shall be on time," I answered. "At three 
o'clock, then." 

This, I felt, as I made my way home, would 
b3 worth staying over another day for, and I 
sincerely hoped that nothing might interfere 
with the doctor's plans so far as the securing of 
this subject was concerned. I reflected that he 
might have left the city, might be ill, might be 
engaged, or might be unwilling to submit to hyp- 
nosis — fifty possibilities presented themselves, 
and the relief I experienced, when, at three 
o'clock precisely, I entered the doctor's office, 
and found there the doctor, the subject, and 
two other medical gentlemen, was good evidence 
of the importance of the occasion in my opinion. 
The young man was not pleasant to look upon 
—if there is anything in physiognomy, he was 
of a vicious disposition, but my conclusions were 
probably derived from the doctor's description 
beforehand, and are in themselves of no value. 
The doctor was engaged in making the subject, 
whose name was Harry, give an account of his 
late employer, the traveling hypnotist, and was 
laughing at the description of certain of his tricks 
when I entered the room. 

"Let us see if you will do a few things for 
me, Harry," he said. 



mvpnotism up to date 14I 

"Say, ye don't want any fake 'bout this, do 
yer?" inquired Harry. "What I mean is, it's 
on the square. It didn't make no diff'runce to 
the boss whether I was asleep or not, jes' so 
long as I done the tricks an' fooled the people; 
thet's all he cared fur. But I kin sleep ef I 
wanter, an' sometimes I jes' used ter keep 
awake on my own account. Ef you say *sleep,' 
then sleep it is, boss I" 

"Yes, I want no faking here," said the doc- 
tor. "The sounder you sleep the better. I'm 
not going to show you off before a crowd of 
people and I don't care whether you do the 
things I want you to do or not — but remember, 
no shamming sleep! If I catch you at that you'll 
not get the money I promised you." 

"It's all right — it's all right," said Harry. 
"Jes' as easy ter go to sleep as not, boss, an' 
when you say it's got ter be on the level, why 
—that goes. Don't make no diff'runce ter me, 
jes' accordin' as I'm paid fer the job." 

The doctor smiled inscrutabl}^ and directed 
the subject to look at a bright object on the 
wall — "or, no," he added, "look me straight in 
the eyes." 

"I b'lieve I kin go quicker ef I look squar' 
at you," said the latter. 



1^2 HYPNOTISM UP tO DATE 

"Stand up, then," said the doctor. -'Look at 
me. So. Right into the pupils of my eyes. 
Just there. Don't move. Right into the pupils. 
Keep steady now. Now you're going. Sleep 
standing on your feet. Quite easily now; letting 
yourself go, and sleeping on your feet. Now 
your muscles are getting hard and stiff. Your 
eyes are closing. Your whole body is rigid and 
stiff as a board. You are fast asleep and falling 
forward. I shall catch you. Let yourself come. 
You're coming. You can't resist. Now you're 
coming. Quicker. Quicker. Here you come," 
— and the subject,with his eyes shut, fell forward 
like a marble image. The doctor caught him, 
and supported him while I arranged a couple of 
chairs,in response to a nod, and the subject was 
accordingly laid out, head on one chair and 
heels on the other. 

"This is catalepsy," said the doctor, to one 
of the physicians, "and I think we shall also 
find profound anaesthesia present. However, I 
will get you to test this. Raise his eyelid." 

The latter did so, and the eyeball was seen to 
have receded, leaving only the white visible. 
This was insensible to touch. The breathing 
was very faint, and the extremities cold. The 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 43 

doctor produced a hat pin, and silently handed it 
to the physician, signaling at the same time that 
he should test the subject's insensibility to pain. 
Accordingly, the latter ran the pin suddenl}^ 
through the biceps muscle of the subject's arm, 
and failed to elicit a wink of the eyelids, a 
tremor of the frame, or even an increase in the 
respiration. Having tested the subject's insen- 
sibility in the same manner in various other 
parts of the bod}^ commonly found to be sensi- 
tive in the normal condition, the physician de- 
clared himself to be satisfied that the young man 
was not shamming sleep. 

"I want you to be quite certain," said the 
doctor, "before we proceed." 

•'We are both satisfied," they replied. 

"Your body," said the doctor, addressing the 
subject, and passing his hand slowly down him 
from the head to the feet, "is rigid, stiff, and 
cannot be bent. An iron rod runs through you 
from your head to your feet, and you cannot 
bend. You can feel nothing, and you cannot 
bend yourself. You could support a ton weight 
in the position in which you are now. You 
are made of iron." 

"He could, in this condition, support a great 



144 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



weight," said the doctor, turning to us. ^^It is 
a common platform experiment, as you know, 
for the operator to stand upon the abdomen of 
his cataleptic subject." One of the physicians 
present sat upon the body, which remained as 
rigid as steel. 

"An abnormal muscular development induced 
b}^ special training," said he. 

"No training at all," replied the doctor. "An 
unusual physical condition induced by sugges- 
tion, if you will allow me." 

Having been relieved of the ph3^sician's 
weight, the subject was told that his muscles 
were quietly and easily relaxing, and he unbent 
slowly till he touched the floor. 

"It would be just as easy to make him bend 
up from this position till he was curved like a 
bow between these chairs," said the doctor, 
"but he has done enough in the cataleptic state, 
I think. Harry," he called, sharply, "you 
will get up now and stand on your feet." 

The subject slowly did as he was ordered. 

"You can open your eyes, and look at me. 
You can talk. You can speak clearly. You 
are fast asleep, but your eyes are open. You 
can see me plainly — see me standing before 
you?" 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



H5 



"Why, yes, I see you," he answered. 

"You have been fighting," said the doctor. 

"No, I have not." 

"Wh}^ you're all cut about the face and 
hands. Come here," and he took him over to a 
mirror, "Look at yourself in this glass. Don't 
3^ou see that your hands and face are all cut? 
You see the marks. You see the blood. It 
was that man standing behuid you who did this 
to you. He struck you when you were not 
looking. He struck you and kicked you. You 
had done nothing to him. You had not spoken 
to him, and he kicked you into the gutter. For 
nothing at all. You had done nothing to him." 

"Blast him, no!" said Harry, his features 
convulsed with rage. "I done nothing to him. 
What did he cut me like this for? I'll get even 
with him. I'll make him sorry for this." 

"He has always been your enemy," pursued 
the tempter. "He has injured you before. Now 
he says he will murder you the next time you 
meet." 

"He will, will he?" said Harry, with a snarl, 
struggling in the doctor's grasp. "Let me at 
him. We'll see about that!" 

"He is there behind me," said the doctor. 



146 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

pointing to one of the physicians, who had been 
prepared beforehand, and was standing with 
his back to the doctor. '^He is there, with his 
back turned. He can't see you. Now's your 
chance. Kill him. You want his life. If you 
don't kill him, he'll have your blood. Kill him 
now. He struck you for nothing." 

Harry's face was likr a devil's as he freed 
himself and stood for a second with glaring 
ej-es, half crouching, as if he were about to * 
spring upon his enemy's back and drag him to 
the ground. "Take this," said the doctor 
quickly, whipping the stage dagger out of his 
pocket, and thrusting it into the other's hand. 
"Stab him in the back now, before he can turn 
round. If he turns round 37^ou're done for." 

With a cry of rage the subject, whose hand 
had closed involuntarily upon the weapon given 
him, but who had not for an instant taken his 
eyes off the man before him, sprang forward, and 
struck twice viciously at the latter's back. The 
other physician and myself were watching 
closely. The doctor could not from his position 
see the whole action, though he heard the blows. 
As the subject struck, the victim, according to 
arrangenijiit, threw up his arms and fell face for- 
ward on the floor. 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 1 47 

"By God, I've killed him!" said Harry.— 
*'And a good job, too," he muttered savagely 
between his teeth. 

"A nice day's work this," said the doctor, 
coming forward. "What did 3^ou kill him for?" 

"Because I wanted to," was the sullen reply. 

"Because 1 told you to.^" 

"No, because I wante^ to." 

"Well, you'll probably hang for it," said the 
doctor. "Give me the knife, it's covered with 
blood," — and he wiped the imaginary clots of 
gore from the blade. 

Harry was regarding his victim with fixed 
eyes. "I wanted to kill him," he said. 

"Go and sit down over there," said the doc- 
tor, peremptorily. "I shall speak to you later 
about this. Can't have a murder committed in 
m}^ office, and let the murderer go free. You 
will probably hang for this piece of work." 

"I wanted to kill him," answered the subject 
imperturbably, "an' I done it." 

Turning to us, the doctor said: "Well, I'm 
rather surprised at this thing myself. I never 
expected that he would really strike with the 
knife, because he certainly believed it was a 
genuine dagger." 



148 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

'^ He did not strike with it," said the physician 
who had watched the experiment, and I echoed 
his remark. "He did not use the point of the 
dagger at all." 

"Is that possible?" asked the doctor. 

"Fact," said the victim, who had returned to 
life. "I felt the blows, but they were delivered 
with the hand, and not with the weapon." 

"How on earth did he manage it?" the doc- 
tor inquired. 

"He turned his hand," I said, "as he struck. 
We could see the dagger's blade sticking out 
in the other direction, and both times he struck 
with his hand turned. That old fraud of a dagger 
was just as real to him as a bowieknife." 

"And he was afraid to use it," said the doc- 
tor, much gratified. "Well, gentlemen, I am 
not sorry that this experiment has turned out as 
it has done, because I have been contending for 
years that the subject will not commit even a 
'laboratory' crima with a weapon which he feels 
to be genuine. If I had given him a pasteboard 
dagger, he would have, no doubt, struck with 
the blade, but he was unable to detect the differ- 
ence between the weapon he held and a genuine 
knife, in point of size, weight, or feeling, and 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



149 



his instinct of self preservation warned him to 
have none of it." 

"It seems almost incredible that he is asleep," 
said one of the physicians. "Yet I am satisfied 
that he is. May we experiment further?" 

"What would you like to see?" asked the 
doctor. "Ah, perhaps this will interest you. 
Come here, Harry. Sit down in this chair. 
You are in a deep sleep. You are feeling quite 
comfortable now. Pulse quite even, and nor- 
mal," and one of the physicians satisfied him- 
self on that point. 

"Seventy-four beats," he announced. 

"You are beginning to get warm, Harry," 
said the doctor. "You are very warm now. 
You are hot, boiling hot. You have been run- 
ning a race. You are panting with the exertion. 
In a high fever. Your blood is heated to a fear- 
ful degree. You are getting hotter. You are 
in a raging fever." 

The subject manifested many signs of dis- 
comfort, gasping and breathing quickly as he 
shifted about in his chair, and after a couple of 
minutes had elapsed, during which period the 
doctor unceasingly plied him with suggestions, 
the subject's pulse was taken by the same phy- 
sician, who observed: 



150 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

^' One hundred and thirty!" 

"Now you are getting cooler," said the doc- 
tor, soothingly. "Now all that heat and dis- 
tress have passed away, and you are quite cool 
again. No more heat now. You are getting 
cold, getting very cold. You are having a cold 
bath. There. I have thrown a bucket of cold 
water over you. Ugh! How deadly cold it 
feels! You are encased in ice. Packed like a 
corpse in ice. Getting colder and colder. Pulse 
getting slower and slower. Slower and slower." 

In the course of a little while the physician 
announced "Sixty!" and his friend caught the 
subject's wrist to assure himself of the fact. 

"A very singular thing!" he said, "I con- 
fess I have not believed these stories of hypnotic 
wonders, but it would be foolish to doubt the 
evidence of one's senses. Could such sugges- 
tions as these be of service in real fevers.^" 

"Of the greatest service," said the doctor. 
"Your pulse is getting up again to its normal 
state," he added to the patient. "You are feel- 
ing quite well, and in five minutes will be wide 
awake, with nothing the matter with you. No 
pain or ache of any kind in your body, and you 
will feel no ill effects whatever from anything 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 151 

you have done this afternoon. Now you are 
quite well, and resting quietly." 

The physician took the pulse. 

"Seventy," he said, after a little. 

The physicians were carefully watching the 
quick, deep respirations of the sleeper, and 
stroked their chins reflectively — a favorite habit 
with the members of the profession, I am told. 

At the expiration of his appointed five min- 
utes the subject awoke, stretching himself, and 
rubbing his eyes. 

"You have been asleep for five minutes," said 
the doctor. 

"Sure." 

"Been sound asleep?" 

"Been as sound as a man kin be and not be 
dead, I guess." 

"What have you been doing?" asked one of 
the visitors. 

"Been sleeping." 

"Walking about at all?" 

"Dunno. Don't think so. Don't remember 
it." 

"Well, you very nearly murdered one of these 
gentlemen," said the doctor, "and if you had, 
hanging would have been the end of you." 



152 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

Harry's face expressed no surprise. He had 
been used before for experimental crimes, and 
there was no room for wonder. 

"I must have been pretty quick about it," he 
said with a grin. 

"You have been just an hour and ten min- 
utes," said the doctor. 

The subject jumped to his feet. "Git out!" 
he cried. "I ain't bin asleep more'n five min- 
utes, an' that I'll take my oath to." 

"The time was an hour and ten minutes, 
nevertheless," said the doctor. "Here's your 
money, Harry. You have been 'on the square,' 
as you call it, all through this experiment. See 
that you never sham with me, and if I ever want 
3^ou again, and for some reason or other you 
can't go to sleep, why, say so. I know that you 
were not shamming to-day." 

"I kin sleep when I wanter," said Harry. 
"Good-day, gents," and he departed. 

"Parkyn," said one of the physicians, as he 
shook hands, " I must go further into this thing. 
It is really remarkable." 

"You can experiment for yourself," said the 
doctor, with a shrug. "There are no miracles 
in connection with it, and there is no reason 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



153 



why yoa cannot use suggestion with great ad- 
vantage yourself in your practice. Try medi- 
cine and suggestion." 

'^What do you think?" said I, when we were 
alone. "Will they investigate for themselves?" 

"I think they will," he replied. "It is be- 
ginning to dawn upon the profession that by its 
attitude of hostility towards the emplo3'ment of 
hypnotism it has stultified itself in the eyes of pro- 
gressive thinkers the world over, and that if it 
refuses to recognize facts it must expect to lose 
caste. The profession will not take kindly to 
the idea of being behind the age, so that we 
may look for active research in this direction." 



CHAPTER XI. 

THERAPEUTIC POSSIBILITIES OF HYPNOTISM. 

NEGLECT OF THE GENERAL PRACTITIONER 
TO INVESTIGATE PHENOMENA. IMPOR- 
TANCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT 

THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE REGULAR 
PRACTITIONER ARE MOST VALUABLE IN 
CONJUNCTION WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL 

TREATMENT. EXAMPLES. DISEASES IN 

WHICH SUGGESTION IS OF VALUE. 

The purpose of this book, as set forth in the 
preceding chapters, has been more in the direc- 
tion of divesting hypnotism of its terrors than of 
pointing out its advantages as a therapeutic 
agent over material remedies, or in conjunction 
with the material remedies employed by the 
medical profession. But it is evident that the 
chief value of h3'pnotic suggestion to the world 
at large lies in its therapeutic possibilities. Hj-p- 
notism is not a panacea for every ill that flesh is 
heir to, but it does afford a simple means of at- 
tacking and removing many kinds of actual as 
154 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



155 



well as imaginary diseases, the roots of which 
are engrafted as firmly in the mind as in tho 
body of the patient. It has been £;iid that h\p- 
notic suggestion is an imaginary cure for an 
imaginary disease, but this contention, in the 
light of the abundant proof at hand to the con- 
trary, is as foolisli as the claim of the enthusiast 
that every disease, hysterical or organic, must 
absolutely 3'ield to hypnotic treatment. Upon 
the temperament of the patient, the efficacy of 
the means employed for his restoration to health 
will depend, but it must not be forgotten that 
while hypnotism alone may be unable to effect 
a cure, hypnotism and medicine together, or in 
other words, psychical and material remedies 
conjoined, form the most powerful weapon of 
attack. The power of the mind over the body 
is being generally recognized, and will event- 
ually be established as a scientific fact. It is 
something of a stain upon the escutcheon of 
ir.edical science that it should be, with some no- 
table exceptionSjSO loath to investigate the claims 
of hypnotism for recognition as an honorable 
ally, and so unwilling to ad-mit the existence 
of phenomena which are daily, if not hourly, in 
evidence. The medical profession condemns 



156 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

the performance of the public hypnotist, and 
with some reason ; but it should be remembered 
that if the doctors had done their duty in the 
matter of investigating the phenomena presented, 
and had made use of the agency themselves in 
legitimate practice, the marvels which the 
traveling hypnotist presents to his audience in 
the feats of his subjects would have ceased to be 
marvels long ago, and the" professor" would have 
played to empty houses. It is because the public 
generally knows nothing of hypnotism that it 
is regarded as a mysterious power, and hostility 
towards it on the part of medical science is only 
calculated to confirm this belief. For it must be 
always borne in mind that hypnotic phenomena 
are facts, and when the public has the facts 
before it, it is contented to accept them with- 
out inquiring too closely into the deductions 
which the "professor" may draw therefrom to 
his own advantage. 

It is well for the prestige of the medical profes- 
sion that even at the eleventh hour its members 
are reluctantly beginning to investigate for them- 
selves as to the value of psychology in its relation 
to physiology and diseased conditions. It might 
have happened that the reaction against the 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 



157 



inefficiency of drugs, which may alone account 
for the existence of Christian Science to day, 
might have spread to all classes of society, and the 
physician's art have fallen itself into disrepute. 

Cures by faith and prayer have been accom- 
plished in all ages, but it is only at the close of 
this, the nineteenth, century that we recognize 
the power by which these cures are accomplished 
and realize that the soul of man is an organizing 
or creative entity. By means of hypnotic sug- 
gestion it is possible to scientifically direct this 
force of the soul among all men in all lands, re- 
gardless of race or creed. 

The point which the medical profession has 
tardily conceded is that it is better for it to 
take upon itself the cure of the mind of the 
patient, if it can be done by suggestion, than 
to direct its attention solely, as has been its 
wont, to the prescribing of material medicines. 
They have left the ministering to minds diseased 
to the clergy, forgetting that the latter, whose 
splendid achievements I would not for one mo- 
ment depreciate, have no such opportunities for 
diagnosing the case as are presented to the 
family practitioner. The faculty has long 
studied the anatomy and physiology of the 



158 HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

brain, but to the function of the dominant organ, 
the all-powerful soul, they have paid but scanty 
attention. While those who have given their 
time and attention to this study have not been 
slow to give the results of their labors to the 
world, I feel that the knowledge of the power 
inherent in man is still very limited. That Christ 
understood it perfectly there cannot be a doubt. 
Some of the miracles that he performed are 
being daily repeated, and when the laws which 
govern this psychic force are understood our 
lepers will again be healed, and destroj^ed tis- 
sues restored. 

It is self-evident that this force can be most 
successfully directed b}' one who combines with 
its acquaintance a thorough knowledge of anat- 
omy, physiology, diagnosis, surger}' and med- 
icine, and one who, in addition to this, enjoys 
the confidence of the patient. A physician of 
note has wisely said: "Our doctors have been 
too materialistic; our so-called metaphysicians, 
Christian Scientists, and mental healers too ig- 
norant of medicine and the law of suggestion. 
The work should bo combined. We cannot 
ignore the body. We cannot do without either 
food or medicine. Hunger and thirst may well 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 159 

be classified as disease. What are the remedies? 
Bread and butter, beefsteak, potatoes, and pure 
water. Show us how to do without these, and 
then we can think of doing without medicines 
of all kinds." 

The human system might be aptly likened to 
an electric street railway. The brain is the 
dynamo; the organs of the body are the street 
cars. These sometimes stop running, and no 
amount of attention given to the car itself will 
be of benefit when the trouble is really in the 
dynamo. On the other hand, an accident may 
happen to the car itself, and local repairs are 
necessary to remove the obstruction. An ex- 
perienced electrician can find the cause of the 
disturbance in both cases, and remove it. 
Similarly, the man who attempts to regulate 
the human system must have acquired a portion 
of his knowledge in the dissecting-room and the 
laboratory. 

In almost every case in which it is necessary 
to make use of drugs, suggestion will be found 
to heighten the effect of their employment, and 
many of the attending symptoms may be re- 
lieved. It has been found efficacious, for ex- 
ample, in controlling the headache of typhoid 



l6o HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE 

fever, lowering the temperature, and removing 
or even preventing the delirium. I have yet to 
hear of a case of typhoid fever ending fatally in 
which suggestion was given a fair trial in addi- 
tion to the regular treatment. 

I hope in a future work to give detailed ac- 
counts of cases benefited by the employment of 
suggestion ; it is only possible here to call atten- 
tion to two cases of acute peritonitis which I 
cull from the records of Dr. Parkyn. While 
the headache was still intense and the vomiting 
persistent, he succeeded in inducing hypnosis, 
withdrew the morphine, and caused the disap- 
pearance of the distressing symptoms immedi- 
ately. The patients were able to retain and 
assimilate food perfectly. Except that hypno- 
tism was also employed here, both cases were 
treated according to the regular methods, and a 
remarkably quick recovery ensued. 

Hypnosis will probably never take the place 
of chloroform or ether as a general anaesthetic, 
but it can be used successfully in a very large 
number of cases for even major operations and 
is of special value where the use of a stupefying 
drug is contra-indicated. In obstetrical prac- 
tice it has been found useful in the removal of 



HYPNOTISM UP TO DATE l6l 

pain, and seems to place the civilized woman 
on a par with her more ignorant, but in this 
respect more fortunate, sister,the savage woman, 
with whom child-birth is not a function to be 
dreaded. 

Briefly the diseases in which hypnotism has 
been proved to be of service are the following: 

Hysteria, or all forms of imaginary ailments 
and diseases. Alcoholism, morphine and co- 
caine habits, stammering, sciatica and all forms 
of neuralgia, sick-headache, rheumatism, vicious 
habits, bad temper, St. Vitus dance, epilepsy, 
nervous dyspepsia, constipation, dysmenorrhoea, 
paralysis, locomotor ataxia, insomnia, chronic 
sprains, deranged conditions of the circulation 
of the blood, and monomania. It is most useful 
in diagnosing a disease, as, for instance, in en- 
abling a physician to distinguish between an 
actual disease and a hysterical complaint simu- 
lating that disease. 

In conclusion it may be said that the value 
of the application of hypnotic suggestion in 
dentistry is self-evident, and the time is not far 
distant when the knowledge of hypnotism will 
be rightly regarded as worthy of acquirement 
both by men of science and the public at large. 



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